Use High-Interest History to Teach and Reinforce Literacy Skills

• grades 1-5
• Maine Learning Results and Common Core Standards alignment
• six 90-minute lessons per unit
• all materials included: hands-on activities, art projects, games, artifacts, resources
• you teach or we teach at your location

Choose Your Delivery Method
Rent a complete kit for 8 weeks or Experienced educators from Penobscot Marine Museum will teach the unit at your school.

Contact
Penobscot Marine Museum Education Deaprtment
207-548-2529
Email

Choose Your Unit

Native Americans in Maine

Who were the native Maine tribes, how did they live, and who and where are they now? Projects include making an incised clay pot and a traditional Penobscot-style hat. Learn about the many uses of birch bark. Kit includes animal skins and other artifacts.

Maine and the Orient
In the 1800′s, Mainers were building ships and sailing around the world. Why did they go to China and Japan? What did they bring home? Projects include making a silk flag, decorating bamboo beads, and unwinding strands of silk fiber from a silkworm cocoon.

Fisheries: Fin Fish

What fish do we catch? How and where do we catch them? How have the fisheries changed? Projects include making fish prints and a trawl line. Games include fishery card games and the “Sustainability Game.”

Lobstering in Maine
What are crustaceans? How big is a baby lobster? How are lobsters caught? Kit includes a “Lobster Jeopardy” game. Projects include gauging lobsters and making lobster buoys.
A Sense of Place
This unit includes basic geography and town history, individualized for your town with maps and historic photographs from the museum’s collections. Students focus on what is important about their town, create their own historic postcards, and complete other projects with their town as the centerpiece.
Work Around the Bay
Students learn about granite, ice, lumber and paper in the 19th and 20th centuries. Why are trees important to Maine? Is all wood the same? Where does granite come from? Students learn about these natural resources and their importance in Maine history. Projects include an ice experiment, and making bricks and paper.

Life on Shore in Maritime Communities
How did people live in the maritime communities around Penobscot Bay in the 19th and 20th centuries? How is life different today? Projects include a quilt puzzle, felted mittens and lighthouse models.

Life at Sea

What was it like to live on a sailing vessel 150 years ago? What did the Captain’s children do? What cargo was carried, and where was it taken? Learn the answers to these questions using real diaries and journals kept by young people who lived aboard ship. Projects include making a sailor’s valentine from shells and mapping routes to foreign ports.

Shipbuilding: Trees to Ships

What kinds of ships were built in Maine now and in the past? What are the parts of a vessel? Projects include making a boat model, “registering” vessels and playing our “Launch Day!” game with authentic vessel “biographies.”
Explorers Come to Maine
Why did Europeans risk their lives to sail across the ocean to a new world? What were they looking for? What did they find? How did they navigate? Projects include making European flags, making a ship model, a time line and a shadowbox. Kit includes our “Maine Explorers Game.”