Teaching with Historic Places (TWHP), a program begun by the National Park Service's Heritage Education Services Office, has recently developed a series of 138 history lesson plans. They're perfect for enhancing your family’s outdoor experience through education.

Designed mainly for teachers to supplement field trip background information, the lesson plans also a great resource for parents who are home schooling their children or for those parents who just want to bring their kids somewhere where they'll learn about the past. Here's what TWHP is all about:

This series of classroom-ready lesson plans uses outdoor historic sites to explore American history.

Created by National Park Service interpreters, preservation professionals, and educators, the lessons are available free of charge on the NPS Website. They are ready for immediate use in the classroom and can be used directly on the computer or can be printed out, photocopied, and distributed to students.

Perfect For Parents

Using these easy, step by step teaching guides, you can make your next trip to an historic outdoor destination more rewarding and enjoyable for both you and your kids.

Whether you are home-schooling your kids or you just want to share a part of your child’s education, these lesson plans are perfect for the parent who cares about his child’s intellectual development.

There are six parts to the lesson plans:

1. Getting Started – using images and questions to begin the inquiry
2. Setting the Stage – background information
3. Locating the Site – maps familiarize students with the historic site’s location
4. Determining the Facts – readings, documents, and/or charts
5. Visual Evidence – images play an integral role, helping achieve the lesson's objectives
6. Putting It All Together – activities engage students in a variety of creative exercises that help synthesize the information

These lessons have everything you need to add more to your child's educaton and awareness of the importance of historical events. They can even improve the quality of your relationship with your children (so long as you can find a way to make it fun and educational). You can find the lesson plans here.

You can view the entire collection according to topic, time period, skill, U.S. History Standards, and Social Studies Standards.

Students As Historians

Teaching with Historic Places lesson plans turn students into historians as they study primary sources, historical and contemporary photographs and maps, and other documents, and then search for the history around them in their own communities.

They enjoy a historian's sense of discovery as they learn about the past by actively examining places to gather information, form and test hypotheses, piece together "the big picture," and bridge the past to the present. By seeking out nearby historic places, students explore the relationship of their own community's history to the broader themes that have shaped this country.

New Lesson Plan Makes Lincoln More than an Historical Figure

In President Lincoln’s Cottage, Lincoln appears as a husband and father as well as a national leader. Students glimpse him spending quality time with his family by taking a carriage ride with his wife and playing checkers with his son.

Teachers and parents who have helped their students grasp the key dates, places, events, and people in Civil War history now have the chance to flesh out one of the period’s most prominent individuals, Abraham Lincoln.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which administers President Lincoln’s Cottage, American University graduate students, and the National Park Service’s Teaching with Historic Places program worked together to create the new online lesson plan President Lincoln’s Cottage: A Retreat, which uses the White House resident’s second home as a foundation on which to construct a portrait of him. You can reach this lesson plan here.

National Park Service Hits Homerun AGAIN!

All too often we hear the media and our fellow citizens criticizing the efforts of the Federal Government, but the National Park Service stands as an example of how a government agency can serve the public interest on many fronts and do so while maintaining fiscal responsibility.

It’s no secret that when short-sighted budget cuts are called for, one of the first places to feel the sting has historically been the NPS, even though our parks are essential for tourism revenue, not to mention environmental protection and balance. Yet, the dedicated career professionals of our Park Service have always stepped up to the challenges they’ve faced, and they deserve our support and thanks!