Loan Boxes
Bring a piece of the past into your classroom. Our loan boxes are designed for teachers to use in their classrooms and are packed with reproductions of historical artifacts, handbooks and educational resources. Check out a loan box for a week for free.
Textiles Loan Box
Students are introduced to the natural fibers that Arkansas pioneers used to spin thread, weave cloth and sew. Tools include wool cards and a drop spindle. Well-illustrated literature explains the processes. Lesson plans included.
Lighting Loan Box
The items in this box range from flint and steel to candle lanterns. Primitive oil lamps, wicks, bees wax, dipped candles in various stages and a candle mold illustrate ways pioneers lighted their homes. Handbooks and lesson plans included.
Food Ways Loan Box
Sniff and learn, and compare and contrast with the herbs and spices pioneers used—plus tea, coffee and sugar in their 19th century form. There are also dishes and cutlery from rural and urban households. Handbooks about food of the 1840s and lesson plans are included.
Slavery: A Child’s View
Lye soap, wooden dishes, a doll and straw-stuffed ticking help bring to life the material-culture of an Arkansas slave child. A script, based on a true story, is included with costuming for a girl and boy. Written materials include oral histories of former Arkansas slaves.
The Middle Passage
In a loan box designed for the exhibit The Henrietta Marie, A Slave Ship Speaks, see the daily log kept by the ship’s captain and the iron chains kept on the slaves’ ankles. Posters and background readings give you multiple ways to explore this time in European, African and American history that produced the institution of slavery.
The Arkansas Traveler Loan Box
The story of a gentleman lost in the Arkansas woods was repeated, over and over, in the 1840s, and soon became a well known song and painting. It eventually became an important part of Arkansas’s image. Students can use items in the box to re-enact the famous encounter. Lesson plans are included.
A Pioneer Sampler Box
Can’t decide on one theme? This box contains a little bit about a lot of things – to teach about pioneer life in Arkansas.
