Discovery Days

Discovery Days is a museum-based program where children take part in hands-on exploration, creativity, and play through weekly themes rooted in real artifacts and big ideas. Participants investigate the Island’s history, science, and culture by asking questions, experimenting, collaborating, and creating using the Museum’s collections, exhibitions, and classrooms. Activities include investigation, storytelling, making, scavenger hunts using teamwork and creative way-finding, making maps and journals, exploring navigational tools and handcrafted artifacts from Museum collections, and making original projects with materials such as fiber, clay, paper, paint, wood, and shells.

• Ages: 5–12 years old
• Schedule: Each session runs Tuesday through Friday, 9 am–1 pm
• Price: $400 / session – Non-Members; $350 / session – Members; 10% discount for year-round Island families

Discovery Days is designed for curious children ages 5–12 and is led by Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s Education Team. Every week begins with a guiding “Big Question,” followed by age-appropriate activities that explore possible answers together, and each 2026 session follows a specific theme such as Island Navigators, Craft, Ocean Guardians, Legends & Lore, All Hands on Deck, Vineyard Time Travelers, or Game Time. Depending on the theme, children may create a mini exhibition showcasing camper-made works, make a model biome representing ocean ecosystems, discover ways to protect and steward Island waters, make original stories using multiple creative formats, combine history and imagination to bring the past to life, make a personal logbook documenting “life at sea,” complete seamanship challenges and earn a place on the crew, explore archival materials and artifacts from different eras, make a time capsule capturing moments from Vineyard history, step into the roles of early explorers, colonists, revolutionaries, and Victorian-era visitors, make a new game inspired by the past or a toy crafted from natural materials, and compete in the Discovery Days Olympics. Children are asked to arrive each day with a water bottle, healthy snack, and lunch.

Martha’s Vineyard Museum, founded in 1922 as the Dukes County Historical Society and incorporated in 1923, is more than 100 years old and operates the East Chop and Edgartown Lighthouses on behalf of the towns of Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. The Museum’s mission is to inspire all people to discover, explore, and strengthen their connection to the Island’s diverse heritage. Additional program details, expectations, and policies are outlined in the Discovery Days Handbook, which is required reading for all parents and guardians prior to registration, and refunds are not given later than one week after booking.

Last updated January 28, 2026.