Traveling Trunks

History Detectives

History Detectives

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)


America's Melting Pot

America's Melting Pot

Our America's Melting Pot traveling trunk helps your students dive head-first into the immigrant experience, exploring the many ways and reasons people come to this country and their journey to build a new life. In exploring the ethnically diverse origins of our country, you'll engage your students with various cultures, keepsakes, and memories from immigrants coming to Kansas City and the surrounding region, and how all of these factors have made our modern nation the true cultural melting pot of the world.

This program is appropriate for all ages and opens up important dialogues into our past and current immigrants, and how they have influenced and created our nation as we know it. Students even have the opportunity to speak with their own families to get their own family stories of immigration and change to go along with a provided worksheet, as well as activity prompts. It has also been very successful with ESL groups and current students who themselves or their parents are immigrants.

The trunk is carefully packed with real artifacts that would have been brought by immigrants to their new homeland, along with photographs, a timeline, a world map with attachable icons and markers to plot your student's families' countries of origin, and a related story in English and Spanish. Included is also a teacher's guide to help you easily navigate the program's content and activities. 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 also 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)


Information

Shawnee Town's Traveling Trunks Program has two trunks available for History Detectives and one trunk available for America's Melting Pot - Immigration.

Rental Length: The length of rentals is typically 1-2 weeks, but we can be flexible for larger groups of students. The time it takes to complete the activities in your trunk is open-ended based on your students and schedule; this can range from a couple of hours in one day to many hours over the course of a couple weeks. Look at the attached lesson plans to gauge how long you may need.

Cost: Each trunk is available for rent for a refundable $25 fee. We will hold your cash, check, or credit card information until the trunk is returned intact. We will return your fee by mail within a week of your trunk return, to give us time to ensure all artifacts were returned.

Pick-Up: Trunks can be picked up and returned during normal museum gift shop hours: M-F 8:00 am - 5:00 pm and (March through October) Saturdays 8:00 am - 5:00 pm. The renter is responsible for picking up and returning the trunk to Shawnee Town 1929 in your scheduled rental time frame or your refundable payment will be forfeited. If another teacher will be handling a scheduled pickup/dropoff, please notify staff ahead of arrival.

  • Pickup/Drop off Location:
    Shawnee Town 1929 Museum
    11501 W. 57th Street
    Shawnee, Kansas 66203

Reservations

 Reservations:
Contact Hannah Howard, Curator of Education, at (913) 248-2360 for specifics on availability and to make your reservations. You can also fill out our group visits form below.

Group Visits