Students will learn about the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the election of our first president, George Washington in this section of the online exhibition, The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden. Students will also explore President Washington's role in es

The Densho Project is a non-profit educational organization that preserves historical first-person accounts, photographs and documents in a digital archive. Digitally videotaped oral history interviews include personal experiences of immigration, family life, mass incarceration of Japanese Americ

A small yet effective weapon, the deringer is the type of weapon a woman spying for the Confederacy might have kept in the pocket of a dress or in a handbag.

In this activity, children will create their own family flag using colors and pictures that have personal meanings. They will then explain why they chose those colors and pictures and their meanings. This resource is included in an OurStory module entitled Making the Star-Spangled Banner

Build a monument and think about monuments in Washington, DC and the history those monuments celebrate. This activity from Spark!Lab includes step-by-step directions, discussion questions, and ideas for extending your learning. Spark!Lab activities encourage young learners to explore the inventio

Everyday objects such as pennies and dollar bills can go unnoticed in our lives. We use them all the time, but how often do we really look at them? Taking the time to investigate a familiar thing in detail and then learning to design something similar will strengthen your child’s observati

This website is a comprehensive set of web based resources and activities suitable for students at every grade level. Produced through a collaborative partnership including the National Park Service, the University of Houston, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the Chicago

During the late 1950s and 1960s, American scientists and educators proposed using machines for instruction. Teaching machines and related programmed textbooks used a careful sequence of questions for teaching. Jerome C. Meyer and later William R. Hafel, both of Sunnydale, California, believed that i

Diner's Club was one of the earliest issuers of credit cards beginning in 1950. The convenience and security they came to represent transformed payment methods and later blossomed into one of the primary mechanisms for purchasing goods and services for customers. They also became a device for tra

Samuel Kelly was an English sailor, who recorded his experience of a voyage to Philadelphia in 1787.  Listen to a dramatic reading of his narrative, and then study the supporting primary sources to answer the discussion questions. This resource is part of a series called “Life at Sea: 1680