Treasure Box

I think treasure boxes are so cool.  They are very similar to the centers that I created when I taught second grade last year.  However, it is a little more tricky this year because I strickly teach science with one section of language arts.  In our reading series we have a story discussing good old Ben Franklin.  I could take this story a step farther and create various centers or treasure boxes with items from the time period and also items that I have collected since I began this course.  Included in the treasure boxes would be the two books titled Signing Their Rights Away and Signing Their Lives Away.  I would create an activity to go along with these two books.  The activity could consist of choosing two people (one from each book) to construct a pamphlet discussing detailed information.  The pamphlets that they created would be displayed and sold in the Independence Hall giftshop.  (Of course they would know that we would be pretending, however we could actually set something up in the classroom to resemble Independence Hall).  With that being said, I would definitely include The Declaration of Independence and The U.S. Constituation replications that I received this summer in the treasure boxes.  (I already broke those out of the closet this year and the kids thought they were real!)  This would lead into another activity; comparing and contrasting in their notebooks the writing and language of that time period to today's "lingo."  Quite different!  Since we would be replicating the Independence Hall giftshop inside my classroom I would provide the pictures that I took this summer during the Philadelphia trip, mainly the ones of Independence Hall.  Students would have to create their own postcards on index cards while viewing these photographs.  A few other items that I would also include are the items that we received in the plastic, clear box during the June Institute (lead bullets, stockings, seeds, etc.)  Students would need to compare these items to items that we have today.  Example: stockings-sock, lead bullets-today's ammunition, seeds-seeds that students think of and their uses...I would also include some background information inside these boxes that students could read.  I would print these documents off of the Library of Congress' website.  Everything that the students would complete would be glued or written in their interactive notebooks (after the "gift shop" display of course :)