By Marian Matyn
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The collection of wooden educational toys.
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In late August 2018 Intern Tyjuan Swain (the archive's first CMU football player and intern) and I (Archivist Marian Matyn) were very excited when we discovered original drawings and class notes by Eva M Langworthy Dutcher of her 1921 CMU Manual Arts class. This finally allowed us to link the wooden "educational toys" in the collection to her life and papers.
Student teachers at CMU in 1951 were physically learning in
Manual Arts class how to make various toys from paper designs, wood and
cardboard, how to sew, how to create braided objects, and other very crafty,
very creative projects. These skills allowed them to use basic materials
effectively and inexpensively to create learning experiences for their students,
and create educational toys to illustrate movement, color, coordination,
geometry, physics, how to make furniture, and to encourage various types of
play.
Eva graduated in 1921, got married and took a 20 year break from teaching while she raised her family. She finally returned to complete her CMU teaching degree in 1951. She taught in Remus, MI. Her papers were processed by Tyjuan during his Cultural Resources Management internship and cataloged by Marian. The toys were transferred to the CMU Museum where the curatorial students there will house and care for them according to museum standards.
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| Dutcher's drawing of fish and cat's cradle circle. |