Jamestown Settlement: Hands-On Programming

Our first full day of the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute, this summer, will be spent at nearby historic Jamestowne and Jamestown Settlement.  The entire afternoon is described like this in the schedule:

Kindling a Spark!
What did the fort at Jamestown actually look like? How big were the ships that brought the first settlers to the New World? With the help of staff from Jamestown Settlement, compare life for the first settlers in Jamestown’s fort to that of their closest Powhatan neighbors. Board the seventeenth-century ships and discover if you would have had what it took to survive in the new colony.

This first day promises to offer many opportunities to do things outside of my wheelhouse.  The schedule titles this section as "hands-on programming", so I hope to put my hands on actual tools and equipment in the rebuilt settlement.  I want to feel and smell what things were really like in the first English settlement.  I want to hear the ambience of the place.  Not that I want to reenact events like the Starving Time, I still would like to learn as much about the period as possible.  I expect to meet both the settlers and the natives in the area as I explore.