This is an excellent program for putting students in touch (literally) with history! Your kids can step into a museum curator's shoes and explore what museum professionals do to preserve artifacts and uncover their stories.
Our History Detectives traveling trunks are designed to allow students the opportunity to handle 1910’s - 1930’s artifacts, such as The Saturday Evening Post, World War I iron soldiers and a “Lindy” airplane, paper dolls, garden tools, black and white photographs, butter mold, button hook, etc. In almost every case, these are the real thing from the early twentieth century. The artifacts are carefully packed in a 1920's suitcase along with a magnifying glasses and description forms for students. Included is a teacher's guide to help you easily navigate the program's content and activities.
Students will work in small groups to examine their assigned item, research it and present their findings to you and their class. Teachers receive a brief, easy to follow guide to how to run the program with your students as well as a description of each item, its history, lead questions for teachers, useful links, and lesson expansion ideas.
These lesson plans are designed for fourth grade through high school ages, but teachers can absolutely use the trunks and adapt for your 1st - 3rd grade students! The program is open-ended to allow you easily tailor it to meet the needs and abilities of your students and your time frame; it can be a quick straight-forward activity or an in-depth and challenging one. Kansas curriculum standards this program meets are included in the teacher's guide corresponding to each grade.
We find that students who participate in a traveling trunk activity ahead of their field trip day have a markedly deeper engagement with the stories and spaces in our museum spaces. They will recognize artifacts from the trunks in their spaces, and get excited to tell the stories and show what they know to our team. Contact our staff today!
Program Overview (pdf)