For at home instruction
Maxwell Museum Word PuzzleComplete this word puzzle to learn about the Maxwell Museum and SW culture.
Learn about the Japanese art of origami and make your own origami dog.
Using SymbolsLearn about symbols and make a Chinese Fortune Teller.
Shadow Puppets and StorytellingLearn about the history and practice of Chinese shadow puppetry and make your own shadow puppets. Includes additional resources to make your own puppet theater, write a shadow puppet play and experiment to discover the properties of light and shadow.
World Music and Folk Instruments
Travel around the world and discover folk instruments. Make your own instruments and play them to accompany various songs, chants and dances. Includes additional resources with lessons on musical instruments, cultural heritage and the science of sound and music.
Ancient Egypt-hieroglyphs, tombs and temples
Explore ancient Egypt and discover hieroglyphs, pyramids, temples and more!
Try sky watching like the ancient Maya and make your own star finder to identify constellations.
Write like the ancient Maya and make your own codex.
Discover the history, technique and patterns of Maya weaving. Complete your own weaving word puzzle and make your own friendship bracelet.
Explore dolls from around the world and make your own paper dolls.
Instructions for making your own cardboard loom and weaving a rug sampler. Includes techniques for adding designs from weaving cultures from around the world.
Explore a collection of coiled and woven baskets from the Maxwell Museum collection and weave your own paper basket using recycled materials.
Explore a small sample of pottery from the Maxwell Museum collection, read a story about pottery making and identify the parts of a pot. Resources and instructions to design a pot and for clay pot making included.
Archaeology - Puzzling it Together!
Dig deep into archaeology terms and methods, then try some puzzles. Complete a matching activity and word search puzzle, then color and assemble your own pottery puzzles.
The Great Houses of Chaco Canyon
How to Use Google Earth video tutorial
Take a virtual trip to Chaco Culture National Historical Park with an interactive Google Earth presentation. Fly around the park and identify the Great Houses and learn about the features that make them unique. Complete and color a worksheet to remember your tour.
Archaeoastronomy - Time Keeping
Time travel to the past and keep time like the ancient ones with these fun solar activities. Make your own sundial and track the sun with the Stellarium app. Make daily and yearly observations of the sun and learn about time and the seasons.
Learn what petroglyphs are, how they are made and why they are an important record of the past. Then carve some petroglyphs of your own design. Includes information and resources to learn about and explore petroglyphs right here in the Rio Grande Valley!
Take a close look at stone tool shape and design. Describe projectile points like an expert and play an I Spy guessing game. Then sketch a tool of your own design.
Discover how dendrochronology is useful in archaeology. Create a timeline of historical events and make a tree-ring project that tells your own story!
Journey back in time and meet our earliest ancestors. Learn who they are, where their fossils were found and what traits they had and how they changed. Then complete a timeline of the human family tree and make your own ancestor flash cards and trading cards to keep or give away.
Discover the traits necessary for bipedalism – walking upright. Compare the features of chimpanzees, early human ancestors and modern day humans, then explore footprints. Make your own footprint trackway and analyze footprints just like a Forensic Anthropologist would!
Learn how the fossil and archaeological record shows how our physical and behavioral traits have changed through time. Compare fossil skulls, make calipers to measure 3-D objects and try our opposable thumb challenge.
Acequias of New Mexico
Acequias del Norte film transcript in English
https://lasacequias.org/2020/04/03/suggested-reading-on-new-mexicos-acequias/
Suggested reading on New Mexico’s acequias from Las Acequias.org
Suitable for students in upper elementary and middle school, this guide provides a focus to explore our early ancestors, their biological traits and cultural behaviors.
Suitable for upper elementary and middle school students, this guide provides a focus to study the material remains and archaeological processes of Southwest Puebloan sites presented in the exhibition.
For grades 5 - 8, this worksheet directs students to look closely at, and think and write about an object in the museum.
For grades 2-4, this worksheet directs students to look closely at, and think and write about an object in the museum.
For grades 9-12, this worksheet directs students to look closely at, and think and write about an object in the museum.
For group visits, please share these guidelines with all students, teachers and chapreones visiting the museum and ask for their cooperation to make everyone's visit a pleasant one.
Interdisciplinary lessons for grades 3-5 to utilize the hands-on materials in the loan kit focusing on indigenous communities of the Bering Sea region, their material culture, art, environment, and lifestyle.
These archived activities of the Weaving Generations Together exhibition provide information and ideas for hands-on activities exploring the traditional weaving practices of the Maya of Chiapas, Mexico.
Visual Literacy exercises for grades 6 and up that use Sabino Osuna’s photographs to understand how visual images shaped events of the Mexican Revolution as they were happening and, as primary sources, add to our understanding of this chapter of Mexican history in a broader context.
3rd- 5th grade curriculum to supplement the Maxwell Museum’s signature museum visit experience. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, lessons include storytelling, analysis, vocabulary exercises, art projects, and more, to look for evidence within objects that provide an invaluable source of information about human behavior.
