LOOKING FOR A WAY TO MAKE LEARNING HISTORY FUN?
We share your goal of teaching students and will work with your school to bring relevant history programming to your students. More importantly, your students will become active participants in their own learning experiences.
See how Classroom Outreach meets the Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies!
The Kentucky Historical Society’s Outreach Program
KHS education staff members collaborate with you and come to your classroom, library, or community education center to teach a hands-on history lesson. Your students become historians as they analyze images from our artifact collections and participate in an activity such as quill writing or spinning wool. Through a learner-centered discussion using the Visual Thinking Strategies teaching method, students develop skills in visual literacy, historical literacy, and critical thinking. KHS outreach programming provides a cross-curricular activity that meets standards in Social Studies as well as the Arts and Humanities.
Click here to watch a short video about KHS Classroom Outreach.
Click here for a printable .pdf.
Lesson Options:
Vote for Me
Learn what it means to be an active citizen and discuss attributes that represent a good candidate for office. Draft a platform to run for class president, mayor, or the next Kentucky governor! Design a campaign poster and button to promote your cause. Last, practice giving your election speech to persuade your peers.
Kentucky Inventors
Did you know Kentucky’s history is full of inventors that created things like traffic signals, gas masks, and the wireless telephone? Learn about these inventors and the challenges in developing something new and improved. Put on your thinking caps as you problem-solve to design a patent and invent a model of your own.
Frontier Fortress
Explore early Kentucky forts and frontier communities, learning why they were needed and how they were built and operated. Compare the differences between European settlements and those of American Indians. Armed with newfound knowledge, design your own fort blueprint and key.
Pioneer Pastimes
Travel back in time to imagine yourself as a child of the Kentucky frontier. How did people survive in the wilderness? What did they do for fun once they settled? Test your hand at spinning and carding wool (Grade 4+) or creating clay marbles and designing a game to play with friends.
Quill & Ink
Examine the democratic process with critical thinking and understand why laws are enacted. Problem solve by writing a bill proposal to improve your community or a letter to the mayor about being a good citizen. Use a historic writing tool (a quill feather and liquid ink) to draft your idea to improve our future.
What's that Artifact?
Understand the role of the Kentucky Historical Society by thinking like a historian as you study images and artifacts from our special collections. Handle some of the museum’s ambiguous objects and play a drawing game to see if your peers can guess what they are. After investigating, you will discover how the object’s purpose has changed over time.
Kentucky Explorers
Learn about the early European explorers who surveyed the land we now call Kentucky. Create a journal as if you were an explorer during the 1700s traveling to the frontier for the first time. Choose supplies to take with you, think about who you will meet along the way, and write a letter about your experience.
Logistics
- This program is available in the summer, fall, and winter. During the spring, our museum educators are busy with field trips.
- Programming developed for Pre-K to 8th-grade students
- A full lesson is 80 minutes – 30 minutes for the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) discussion and 50 minutes for the hands-on activity (we are flexible)
- KHS can teach up to three lessons per day with one of the above activities
- Our lessons are capped at 35 students, ensuring each child is engaged and learning
- A full day is $300 for schools within a 60-mile radius of Frankfort, Kentucky. Additional travel fees will apply outside that distance, depending on location. Scholarships are available. Click here for information.
- The fee covers one museum educator and art supplies for up to 105 students
Public schools, home schools, libraries, and community education centers can schedule outreach programming. For more information on bringing KHS Classroom Outreach to your classroom, library, or community, contact our Museum Programs Coordinator, Brittany Petty, or call 502-782-8085.