With online tours, videos, lectures and more, your student can engage with history and keep up with current events from your home computer or personal device! Below are a few of our favorite virtual tours and interactive history lessons for students of all ages.
VIRTUAL TOURS
Through Google Cultural Institute, The Valentine offers online exhibits of Richmond’s history, from our indigenous past to recent events. View A History of Richmond in 50 Objects or History Ink: The Tattoo Archive Projector Edith Shelton’s Richmond - a look at Richmond in the 1950’s.
Among the many online student resources it offers, The Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) also brings the museum to you through 360 tours like the Story of Virginia exhibit and “ Determined: The 400 Year Struggle For Black Equality.”
WEBINARS/ONLINE LECTURES
The VMHC is also offering their Curators at Home series that takes you beyond the bare facts of Virginia history and uncovers the real stories and real people behind the dates. Explore items from their collection that the public rarely gets to see like early 20th century cartoons of suffragists and stories from the Underground Railroad.
The VMHC's video lectures for older students explore history through events such as the Civil War, through landscape and nature, or through African American history.
The Jamestown Settlement and American Revolution Museum at Yorktown also offers webcasts each day on historical skills such as Native American tattooing and colonial food preservation.
VIRGINIA EDUCATOR SOL RESOURCES
The American Civil War Museum offers resources sorted by grade level and theme that are compliant with SOL requirements - such as lessons on Emancipation and the lives of soldiers in the Civil War. In addition, they offer Virtual Programming and Activities for students learning at home.
The Jamestown Settlement and American Revolution Museum at Yorktown's online Educators at Home page provides links to lesson plans, paired with primary sources, activities, and videos - all of which correspond to Virginia SOLs.
With these resources, students can learn from home about the people of Jamestown by diving deep into biographies of historical residents, such as John Smith, Pocahontas, and Angelo - a Ndongo native kidnapped and sold into slavery. They can also delve into the stories of the American Revolution through the Yorktown Chronicles, a resource that provides short films on the major events in the Revolutionary War and the differing perspectives among the key players.
PODCASTS & TV SERIES
Discover the quirky history and long journey behind why Virginia is called a “commonwealth ” in the local podcast “How We Got Here."
If you are looking for more history or for history beyond Virginia, try the list of resources provided by PBS’s show History Detectives. You’ll find lesson plans as well as tips on great detective techniques!
