Description

Digging Up the Past

Grab your tools and get ready to uncover history with the Junior Historians Club: Digging Up the Past Collection!

Part of the Junior Historians Club educational series by Help for Small Museums (HFSM), this ready-to-use curriculum introduces young historians to the exciting worlds of archaeology, artifacts, fossils, excavation, and museum collections. Children discover how archaeologists uncover evidence from the past, what happens to objects after they are discovered, and how museums and researchers use those discoveries to learn about people, places, cultures, and environments from long ago.

Designed for children ages 6–9, this collection turns archaeology into an interactive investigation. Through engaging lessons, hands-on activities, creative projects, games, and challenges, children learn to examine evidence, make observations, ask questions, and use objects to piece together stories about the past.

Whether you’re leading a museum education program, teaching in a classroom, homeschooling your children, or organizing a history club, this curriculum provides everything you need to let young historians experience the excitement of digging up the past.

A Full Season of Programming

Each Junior Historians Club Collection gives you everything you need to offer a complete season of children’s programming. Museums and organizations can advertise their own Junior Historians Club, register participants for free or charge a program fee, and get started without having to develop a curriculum from scratch. Simply print the appropriate workbook for each child each week and you’re ready to go.

Every collection also includes additional resources, including hands-on craft and activity ideas, book recommendations, and other ways to expand each topic. Use the resources exactly as provided or as inspiration to create a program that works for your museum, organization, classroom, or group.

Become an Archaeologist

The Digging Up the Past Collection invites children to investigate history through the clues people have left behind. Young historians learn how archaeologists and other researchers find, study, preserve, and interpret artifacts and fossils and how those discoveries eventually help us understand the past.

Throughout the collection, children will explore topics such as:

• Archaeology and the work of archaeologists
• Artifacts and fossils
• Archaeological discoveries
• Excavations and dig sites
• Layers of soil and what they can tell us
• Dating and arranging objects
• Museum collections and artifact storage
• Studying and interpreting historic objects
• Archaeological specialties
• How discoveries help us understand people and cultures of the past

Children aren’t simply learning about archaeology. They’re encouraged to think and investigate like archaeologists themselves, examining evidence, comparing objects, putting discoveries in order, making predictions, and deciding what clues can tell us about history.

What’s Included

Every Junior Historians Club collection is designed as a complete educational curriculum and includes:

• A series of 7–10 engaging printable workbooks to shape a full season of programming
• Age-appropriate lessons about archaeology, artifacts, fossils, and historical research
• Hands-on archaeological activities and investigations
• Artifact and object-based learning activities
• Creative projects and crafts
• Writing and drawing activities
• Games, puzzles, challenges, and review activities
• Book recommendations to encourage further exploration
• Craft and activity supply lists
• Printable completion certificates
• Ideas for extending learning beyond the workbook

Perfect For

• Museums and historic sites
• Homeschool families
• Classrooms
• Libraries
• History clubs
• After-school programs
• Summer camps
• Curious young historians

Recommended Age: 6–9 years

Designed for Flexible Learning

The Junior Historians Club was created to make teaching history simple, engaging, and enjoyable. The Digging Up the Past Collection can be adapted for a multi-week museum program, homeschool archaeology unit, classroom enrichment experience, history club, or summer program.

Museums can make the experience even more exciting by incorporating objects from their own collections, while classrooms and homeschool families can use everyday objects, photographs, reproductions, and other materials to create their own archaeological investigations.

Learn Through Discovery

Archaeology gives children an opportunity to experience history as a mystery waiting to be solved. Instead of simply being told what happened in the past, young historians learn to look at evidence and ask: What is this? How old might it be? Who used it? Where did it come from? What can it tell us?

By observing, investigating, comparing, questioning, and experimenting, children begin developing the same kinds of skills historians, archaeologists, curators, and researchers use to uncover stories about the past.

A Curriculum You’ll Use Again and Again

Unlike a traditional workbook that’s completed once and put away, every Junior Historians Club collection is designed for repeated use. Museums can build successful children’s programs year after year, homeschool families can reuse the curriculum with younger siblings, and educators can easily adapt activities for new groups of learners.

It’s an investment in a flexible educational resource that continues to inspire young historians long after their first discovery.

Part of the Junior Historians Club Series

The Junior Historians Club is HFSM’s signature curriculum series designed to inspire the next generation of historians through hands-on learning and creative exploration.

Build your own history library by collecting additional Junior Historians Club collections, each featuring a unique historical theme and a new educational adventure.

Product Details

Format: Digital Download (Printable PDF)

Age Range: 6–9 years

License: Single Household or Single Organization Use

Publisher: Help for Small Museums (HFSM)

Store Launch Presale

Preorder today and save 20% before our official store launch on October 1. Secure introductory pricing now, and your digital curriculum will be delivered when the HFSM Store officially opens.