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request history field trips online
Requesting history field trips just got easier. Thanks to our new field trip request form, educators can go to one convenient web site to request visits to nearly all MHS sites and museums. After you fill out the form, the site will contact you by phone or email. (NOTE: The request form does not guarantee your visit. It is only the first step.)
Request field trips to the History Center Museum, Mill City Museum, and historic sites in the metro area, as well as southern and northern Minnesota.
Sign up now for trips to the Minnesota State Capitol, where students encounter government in action. Secondary students get to meet their legislators in The Voice of the People: Your Role in Minnesota Government. $4 per student or adult. March 6-30. A variety of special lessons are available for K-6 students and 7-12 students. As always, general tours of the Capitol are free. Call 651-296-2881 or fill out the field trip request form.
Apply now for FORT SNELLING summer institute
Secondary teachers, read on. If you had the chance to spend a week studying historic events at the very sites where they happened, would you take it? Apply now for our special summer institute, brought to you by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Two sessions are available: July 10-14 and July 24-28.
 Experience "Fort Snelling: A Contentious Ground." Explore Minnesota landmarks that played key roles in 19th-century American History. Meet teachers from throughout the country. Hear noted scholars. Investigate artifacts from multiple perspectives. Then, put it all together and create your own classroom materials.
Your lessons on expansion, settlement, economics, and U.S.-Dakota relations will benefit from sessions at Historic Fort Snelling, Sibley House Historic Site, and the Minnesota History Center Museum.
Hurry! Application deadline is March 15. Travel support and other subsidies will be provided. For more information, contact Erik Holland at 651-296-8562.
BRING students face-to-face with dakota history
Th e Minnesota Historical Society is pleased to announce that the Lower Sioux Agency Historic Site near Morton will re-open for school tours beginning in April 2006. Crucial events of Minnesota's Dakota War occurred here, and the site has significant stories to tell.
Through exhibits, interpretive trails, and hands-on activities, students will learn about Dakota life before, during, and after the war. Students will also gain an understanding of how the events of these few days in August of 1862 played a key part in the development of U.S.-Indian policy. More importantly, students will learn about the role of history in their daily lives. $3 per student; free for teachers and chaperones.
As part of our re-opening celebration, we are pleased to offer financial assistance to help defray bus costs. To schedule, contact Heather Koop at 651-296-6654 or fill out our field trip request form.
SETH EaSTMAN EXHIBIT OPENs this month
Do you teach Minnesota history? Are you looking for new ways to teach American Indian history? Visit the History Center Museum's new Seth Eastman exhibit and view 1840s frontier life through an artist's eyes.
 NOW OPEN Students and teachers have the rare opportunity to see more than 60 pieces by acclaimed American artist Seth Eastman.
A soldier who served at Fort Snelling, Eastman used art to capture scenes of frontier life near the fort. When originally shown in the eastern U.S., Eastman's paintings gave many people their first view of Dakota life.
Book your field trip now. This rare exhibit will be here till May 21. Call 651-297-7258 or fill out our field trip request form.
Museum package trips are $4 per student. Add the classroom lesson of your choice--such as "Dakota Children" or "Indians and the Fur Trade," and pay only $2 more for each student. Chaperones are free.
DOcumentary CELEBRATES CIVIL RIGHTS
ReelMN Documentary Series: 'February One'
Feb. 12, 2006, 2 p.m.
FREE In recognition of African American History Month, the History Center Museum will host a showing of February One. This documentary tells the inspiring stories surrounding a 1960 lunch counter sit-in that helped revitalize the Civil Rights Movement. Teachers, parents, and students (especially History Day kids) will benefit from the film.
On February 1, 1960, four young men sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. In the following days, students from local colleges joined the protest. Word of the events spread nationwide. Within days, students were sitting in at lunch counters in 54 cities around the South. For more information about the film, contact Danielle Dart at 651-296-3252.
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CAKE AND THE CONSTITUTION
I do a "Cake and the Constitution" project. It's a fun way to teach government concepts. Students work together to decorate a three-layered cake, in which each item on the cake stands for a term from our text.
The layers stand for three levels of government: top, national; middle, state; and local, bottom. We divide the frosting sections into three separate, but equal parts, to designate the branches. We also talk about why the Articles of Confederation failed. (If you just throw your ingredients together, your cake won't turn out.)
Kids argue over flavor, use of decorations, and frosting color. Their solutions become the Great Compromise. We discuss how to show the president, Senate, House, and Supreme Court. For example, we've used 9 gummy bears for the justices and 2 mini-candy bars for senators. Sprinkles can represent the House, since members are based on the census.
It's fun to see the kids' choices. I've had students refuse to ratify their cake, and you can tell who likes the president based on how they represent him. Some get very detailed--one group used 39 vocabulary words.
When their cake is complete, I have students draw it. They list all decorations and their meanings. Finally, they write a paragraph telling me what they learned.
--Todd Andrix, Owatonna High School
Do you have a classroom idea you'd like to share with other educators? Please contact us with your idea. If your idea is chosen, we'll send you a free book from the Minnesota Historical Society Press.
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