Student Activity Guides
Printable material for Bullock Museum films and exhibitions
Explore materials that will encourage conversation and help your students discover history, science, and culture.
We suggest selecting one or more Activity Guides for museum exhibitions that you would like to use with your students on a field trip, then print them, and distribute them amongst chaperones and students. Not sure which one might be best for your group's field trip length and content focus? Want to use them on the visit, but are unable to print them in advance? Contact Reservations@TheStoryofTexas.com for assistance.
Activity Guides for All Grade Levels
Activity Guides help students focus on specific topics and skills during their Museum visit.
Making a Living Activity Guide
What jobs have Texans done over time, and how has the state’s geography influenced which industries grew here? How have trade and new industries shaped the economy of Texas? Find out by using the Making a Living Activity Guide. Explore the Texas History Galleries, looking closely at the artifacts and following the guide as it leads your students through six activities in the Museum.
Artifact Adventure
Send your students on an adventure to find an artifact in the Museum, and learn how to analyze it like a historian.
Find and Sketch
As they visit the Museum galleries, your students become artists by sketching artifacts that represent thematic topics. Later, enjoy using their sketches in various ways in your classroom.
Museum Rotunda Mosaic Search
Head up the Grand Staircase to the third floor Rotunda, and look down. Using the Mosaic in the Rotunda floor, students will explore the history of Texas and learn the importance of a detailed examination of artifacts.
Bobstagram Photo Scavenger Hunt
Have your students become keen observers as they take on this Bobstagram Photo Scavenger Hunt. Using cameras, students will find artifacts that represent the concepts in the activity.
Activity Guides for Special Exhibitions
Special temporary exhibitions at the Bullock Museum bring in different topics and disciplines for your students to explore. To enhance your field trips, use these downloads to accompany exhibitions currently on view with activities in the classroom before or after your trip to the Museum.
Hilos de Tradición: Dresses of Mexico
This exhibition is a collaborative exhibition with the Brownsville Historical Association that presents Mexican textiles as living traditions with roots that can be traced back thousands of years to the earliest peoples in Mesoamerica. The tools, patterns, materials, and techniques of crafting these textiles have evolved over the centuries. European influences and modernization have contributed to these changes. But the common thread in all of the textiles is the link they represent between Mexico’s past and present.
Activity Guides for Films
Both the Texas Spirit Theater, a multi-sensory experience, and the IMAX® Theatre offer a memorable and fun way to understand history, science, and culture. Want to enrich your students' experience in the theater? Use these downloads to accompany films currently on view with activities in the classroom before or after your trip to the Museum.
Serengeti
The Serengeti is known for one of nature’s most spectacular events — the annual migration of more than one million wildebeest, followed by an array of other iconic African animals. Experience it through the eyes of the youngest members of the animal cast as they embark on their life’s journeys.
The Arctic: Our Last Great Wilderness
Discover a place that is vast, wild and untouched, where some of the world’s greatest wildlife spectacles unfold. The Arctic National Wildlife refuge, situated in the northeastern corner of Alaska, is one of the wildest places left in North America. For the first time on a giant screen, join National Geographic explorer Florian Schulz for a cinematic adventure through this little-known land.
Dinosaurs of Antarctica
Journey to the south polar landscapes of Antarctica hundreds of millions of years ago when the land was home to primitive forests, thick swamps, and fascinating prehistoric creatures. Fast-forward to the present and join Antarctic scientists on a quest to understand the continent today, its profound transformation into a land of ice, and the ways this transformation can help us to predict future changes to the planet.
School Field Trips presented by The John M. O'Quinn Foundation.
School Programs are generously funded by Featured Sponsor The Marie M. and James H. Galloway Foundation and contributing sponsor The Honorable Kent R. Hance.
The Bullock Museum, a division of the Texas State Preservation Board, is funded by Museum members, donors, and patrons, the Texas State History Museum Foundation, and the State of Texas.