What can American landscapes and other paintings tell us about the evolution of democracy in the United States? This portion of the Land and Landscape module focuses on the influence of land ownership and the evolution of American civic ideas through landscape.
Finding common ground helps students make informed decisions to conserve temperate forests in the United States and central China, habitat of the endangered giant panda. Through classroom activities, on-line simulations, and field investigations students learn about the important role temperate forests play in local and global ecosystems. Action steps culminate in a Class Conservation Action Plan.
In the course of this curriculum students locate the biome in which they live, explore a local habitat, and conduct a biological inventory to assess habitat health and natural and human impacts to this habitat; explore the temperate forest biome through A Walk in the Forest, a virtual forest field study, and through hands-on field studies in a local forest or woodland; examine flora and fauna from the two most biodiverse temperate forest regions, central China and Appalachia, and monitor the impacts of habitat loss and degradation on forest organisms and biodiversity; design the optimal zoo habitat; put their knowledge into action by creating their own Class Conservation Action Plan, building on artifacts in their Habitat Journals and Action Plan Portfolios.
This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members and their supporters, images, news footage, an interactive timeline, and other sources about an important campaign to secure the treaty rights and sovereignty of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Scroll to begin an exploration of the actions Native Nations took to address injustices.
This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, objects, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the efforts of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest to protect and sustain salmon, water, and homelands. Scroll to begin an exploration of the Pacific Northwest history and cultures.
Food! is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. These Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are defined and implemented by students.
Food! is a module broken up into seven parts. Each part contains a series of tasks to complete. Each task contains additional resources to support that task. We have provided a suggested order for the parts and tasks. However, the structure of the guide hopefully allows you to customize your learning experience by selecting which parts, tasks, and resources you would like to utilize and in what order you would like to complete them.
How can the life and work of Gene Davis help us to understand modern art? This children's workbook provides insight into modern art and instructs readers to create artworks inspired by Gene Davis's paintings.
This site examines the history of Earth. Learn about the formation of Earth, dating the age of rocks, geologic time, plate tectonics, climate change, ocean circulation, evolution, extinction, ecology, and topics related to paleobiology.
This Teacher Resource Guide is designed for incorporation into history and social studies curricula. It will introduce your students to some of the events and issues that shaped George Washington’s life. The activities should enhance your students’ knowledge of Washington and expand their horizons about this complex and interesting man.
Examining an artwork in depth fosters observation and critical thinking skills. Looking closely also stimulates conversation about the artistic, cultural, and historical context in which a work of art was made. In this session, students focus on two paintings by the American artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Charles Lang Freer, the founder of the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution, avidly collected Dewing’s art. This activity explores how Dewing’s paintings express his unique aesthetic vision as they also embody the late nineteenth-century idea of the American Renaissance.
This site presents documentation of the eruptions of all volcanoes during the past 10,000 years. Visitors can review volcanic activity reports, view geographic and geologic information for all Holocene volcanoes (those with known activity during the last 10,000 years), and order research and publications by Smithsonian volcanologists and their colleagues.
In this activity (located on pages 9-14 of PDF), learners visit a cemetery to examine the distinguishing characteristics of rock weathering. After researching stone weathering and acid rain, learners apply their knowledge to collect data related to chemical decomposition and physical disintegration at a cemetery site. This detailed lesson guide includes tips for educators, pre/post activity suggestions, hands-outs, and background information.
How can artwork better help us understand the American Experience during the 1930s? This portion of the Scenes of American Life module looks at artwork and the American experience during the Great Depression.
The media for presidential imagery has ranged everywhere from the traditional oil-on-canvas and marble to cotton handkerchiefs and sewing-box lids, and the Gallery houses today a richly varied array of presidential likenesses. In the selection of portraits on view here, some are more sophisticated and striking than others; some are quite rare or altogether unique; some are calculated to impress us with their gravity while others are warmly intimate. Taken collectively, however, they all have one thing in common: In one degree or another, they all evoke the history of the nation's highest office and the individuals who have occupied it.
Welcome to the Smithsonian Institution's HistoryWired: A few of our favorite things. This experimental site introduces visitors to some of the three million objects held by the National Museum of American History, Behring Center. With less than five percent of our vast and diverse collection on public display in our exhibit halls, we hope that Web sites like this will bring many more of our treasures into public view. The initial 450 objects, selected by curators from across the Museum, include famous, unusual, and everyday items with interesting stories to tell. They are not intended to be representative of the Museum's entire collection.
What can photographs of the Civil War tell us about the conflict and developments in the documentation of war? This lesson plan looks at numerous aspects of the Civil War through period photography.
How might history have been different if alternate plans for the Reconstruction of the South had been put into practice? Political leaders and parties in the tense time after the Civil War proposed various plans for Reconstruction. By observing artwork of this period, students will learn how these plans affected the South (and North) and relationships between people of different races and geographic regions.
What can we learn about community and culture from folk art? This guide uses SAAM's collection of folk art as a springboard to activities and questions about art and community history.
In the 1830s, George Catlin (1796–1872) packed his paintbrushes and trekked through remote Indian country in the Great Plains. Committed to documenting traditional Native culture, he visited more than 140 tribes and painted more than 325 portraits and 200 scenes of American Indian life. Catlin's prolific works, both his art and his writings, illustrate Indian cultures on the precipice of radical change—change that would come with U.S. expansion into tribal territories.
In this lesson, students will be asked to examine Catlin's life and to determine how various decisions he made affected its outcome. Students will be asked to interpret, elaborate on, and reenact events occurring in Catlin's lifetime by writing, drawing, and role-playing.
Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. This is a multimedia presentation with videos, lesson plans, a glossary, an educators guide and more.
The purpose of this lesson is to show learners how to keep a nature journal. How to reflect, respond, and question the observations they see in the world.