There’s something different about learning history when you can actually walk into it.
Kids can read about one-room schoolhouses, old-fashioned general stores, blacksmiths, and the communities that existed before supermarkets and sprawling commercial centers. But standing inside an old schoolhouse, seeing the desks children once used, looking at the tools that shaped everyday life, and wandering between historic buildings makes the past feel much more real. That’s what makes the Windham Historical Society’s Village Green such a special local resource.
Tucked into Windham Center, the Village Green is being developed as a living history center where several pieces of Windham’s past have been preserved together. Some buildings have been moved here from other parts of town, while others have been created to recreate what life would have looked like generations ago. For families, it’s an easy opportunity to turn local history into something kids can see, touch, imagine, and remember.
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A Little Village Built to Preserve Windham’s Past
The Village Green didn’t appear all at once. The Windham Historical Society has spent years working toward its vision of creating a living history center in the heart of Windham. The project expanded significantly after the Society acquired the neighboring October House property in 2010, adding approximately two acres of fields beside the Historical Society grounds.
Since then, historic buildings have been moved to the property, new structures have been built, and volunteers have continued restoring and developing the site.
Today, families wandering around the Green can get a glimpse of the different places that once formed the center of everyday community life — the school, the store, the library, the blacksmith shop, and the town gathering places. And each one tells a slightly different part of Windham’s story.
The Village School
If there’s one building especially likely to capture a child’s imagination, it may be the Village School.
What was once Reeve’s Gun Shop was transformed into an authentic replica of a late-1890s New England one-room schoolhouse. Inside, children can see wooden desks and benches, a pot-bellied stove, slates and chalk, McGuffey Readers, quill pens and ink, and even a 36-star American flag.
The Historical Society uses the building for immersive living-history programs that allow students to experience what school might have been like in 1898.
Children participating in these programs can practice penmanship with quill pens, work math problems on slates and experience lessons led by teachers dressed in period clothing. The Society offers schoolhouse programs for school classes as well as homeschoolers, Scout groups and other organizations.
For kids accustomed to iPads, whiteboards, brightly decorated classrooms and dozens of school supplies, seeing how children learned more than a century ago can be fascinating.
The Old Grocery
The Old Grocery has its own remarkable story. The building originally stood at the corner of Route 202 and Windham Center Road before the Historical Society undertook a major fundraising campaign to save and relocate it.
In September 2020, the entire building was lifted from its foundation and transported across the street to the Village Green. It was placed in its permanent location that October.
The goal is to use the building as a living-history museum recreating a late-19th-century country mercantile, complete with artifacts donated by Windham residents and Historical Society members.
For children, an old-fashioned store offers another great opportunity to compare their everyday lives with those of children who lived here generations ago. Before giant grocery stores and online ordering, the local general store was an important part of community life — somewhere neighbors purchased necessities, exchanged news and saw familiar faces.
The South Windham Library
The little mustard-yellow building on the Green is the former South Windham Library. The building spent close to 100 years near the Windham-Gorham town line before being relocated to the Village Green in 2012.
The Historical Society has been developing the building as a museum focusing on South Windham and its railroad history — another chapter of local history that may surprise kids who know Windham primarily as it looks today.
The library is also an important building to know before you visit: during the Society’s 2026 season, this is where visitors can stop in on Wednesday mornings.
The Blacksmith Shop
The blacksmith shop gives kids a glimpse into another part of everyday life that has largely disappeared.
Built on the Village Green in 2018, the shop was designed to eventually feature the Historical Society’s collection of old tools and other equipment associated with a 19th-century blacksmith shop. An antique set of bellows was also donated for the display.
It’s an especially fun building for kids who like tools, building, machinery, or figuring out how things work.
Before factories could produce and ship almost anything imaginable, skilled tradespeople were essential members of small communities. A blacksmith shop helps children begin to understand just how different everyday life once was.
The Gazebo and Village Green
At the center of everything is the gazebo. Added in 2019, it was envisioned as a gathering place for concerts, programs, and other community activities. The surrounding lawn also gives families room to wander between buildings and see how all the pieces of the Village Green fit together. Rather than viewing a single historic building in isolation, kids begin to see the outline of an entire community.
There was a place to learn.
A place to shop.
A place where things were made and repaired.
A place to gather.
That may be one of the most valuable parts of visiting.
Why Kids Will Enjoy the Village Green
History can feel abstract to children — especially when we’re talking about something that happened 100 or 200 years before they were born. The Village Green gives them something concrete.
They can stand inside an old-fashioned classroom and imagine being a student there. They can see the kinds of tools a blacksmith would have needed. They can picture families shopping at a small country store instead of pushing a cart through a modern supermarket.
And because these stories belong to Windham, they’re not simply learning about what life was like “a long time ago. They’re learning about what life was like right here.
That connection to place matters. When children begin recognizing historic buildings, roads, bridges and landmarks around their own community, history becomes part of the landscape they already know.
When Families Can Visit
The easiest time for families to explore is during the Windham Historical Society’s regular summer hours: Wednesdays: 9 a.m.–noon
For the 2026 season, the Society opened May 6 and welcomes visitors every Wednesday morning at the South Windham Library on the Village Green.
Because the Village Green continues to be an evolving living-history project, what’s open or on display can change. If you’re hoping to see a particular building or experience the Village School, it’s worth checking with the Historical Society before making a special trip.
Visit During the Fall Harvest Festival
There’s another particularly fun opportunity for families to experience the Village Green: the Historical Society’s annual Fall Harvest Festival.
The festival was created as an old-fashioned community celebration, bringing people together on the Village Green for the kind of simple fall fun that feels perfectly at home among the historic buildings.
Past festivals have included music, games, contests and other activities reminiscent of an old-fashioned country gathering.
And the tradition is continuing in 2026.
Fourth Annual Fall Harvest Festival
Saturday, October 10, 2026
10 a.m.–3 p.m.
Windham Historical Society Village Green
If you’d like to see the Village Green when it truly feels like a community gathering place again, this may be the perfect time to visit.
Keeping Local History Alive
Places like the Village Green are easy to overlook. We drive past old buildings all the time without necessarily knowing what happened inside them, who used them, or why they mattered.
But communities don’t preserve their history automatically. It happens because people decide it’s worth saving.
Since its founding in 1967, the Windham Historical Society has worked to preserve Windham’s documents, photographs, artifacts, buildings and stories while creating opportunities for the public to learn about the town’s past.
The Village Green takes that mission one step further by creating a place where those stories can be experienced together.
For families, that makes it more than a collection of old buildings. It’s an opportunity to show children that the community they know today was built by generations of people before them — children went to school here, families shopped here, neighbors gathered here, and tradespeople worked here. And someday, the places our children know today will become part of that same story.
Keep Exploring the Sebago Lake Region
Some of the best family outings aren’t big attractions.
They’re the small places that help our kids understand where they live — a local trail, an old bridge, a historic building, a community festival, or a little village preserved by people who care about passing its stories along.
Lake Region Kids Calendar is continually adding family-friendly places to explore throughout the Sebago Lake region, from playgrounds and trails to historic sites, beaches, community spaces and seasonal events.
View our full calendar for a complete list of events happening this week near Sebago Lake.
Looking for a particular community-focused business or service near Sebago Lake? Explore the listings in our Local Directory.
If you’d like weekly ideas like this delivered straight to your inbox — along with local events, outdoor spots, and family-friendly finds — be sure to subscribe to the Lake Region Kids email newsletter so you never miss what’s happening nearby.
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