The Orange County Historical Museum hosted "Colonial Kids Day," previously called "Felicity Day" for the American Girl brand colonial doll.

This year about a dozen girls dressed in period costumes, made spoon dolls, learned an English country dance and practiced their party manners. They started with craft time in the museum basement.

For her spoon doll, Grace Baucum, 8, chose a blue gingham fabric similar to her own apron. She glued black yarn to the top of the spoon to look like her own dark brown hair.

Grace wore her great-great-grandmother's blue gingham apron and a bonnet she picked out in Colonial Williamsburg when she turned 7. She found a short-sleeved white dress with a collar that completed the costume.

"I like learning how they lived so differently than we did," Grace said. "Like there's no television, no microwave."

A lemonade party she remembered from last year was one of the things the Chapel Hill girl was looking forward to at the event.

"We learned party manners, and it was like a tea party," she said.

Later, friends Olivia Wander and Emma Baldwin, both 10, joined hands and practiced chasseing across the wooden floor in the Masonic Lodge. Right next to them stood somewhat smaller versions of themselves, their sisters, Hannah Wander and Laura Baldwin, both 7.

"It totally captures their imagination, being in costume. It's a way to spend a Saturday without anything plugged in," said Erin Donoghue Baldwin, the Carrboro mother of Emma and Laura.

"It fits in with what they read and what they fantasize about -- a time when girls wore dresses, rode horses," she said. "It's a great deal at $6."

Anne Wander who, like Baldwin, made her girls' costumes, explained how she alters the dresses with side panels and extra trim around the wrists and hemline of the skirt as the girls grow.

"I know my girls like to dress up so they're enjoying being able to not just play but to relive history in their dress-up clothes," said Wander, who lives in Chapel Hill.

"And I'm done with my Halloween costumes a month early!"