Classroom Resources

Activities and events to supplement student learning.

A child’s hands hold color-scheme bookmarks above a yellow piece of paper with red stamps on it.
Search the Collection

The Museum's educational and research Web site presents the collections with full color images.

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Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access created the Smithsonian Learning Lab to inspire the discovery and creative use of its rich digital materials—more than a million images, recordings, and texts. Explore our collections, and be sure to make your own.

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Owney the Dog Material

Introduce Owney the Dog with fun, engaging resources.

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Stamp Collecting

The National Postal Museum celebrates the beauty and lore of stamps, showcasing rare stamps and covers from the Museum's renowned collection. A stamp is much more than the physical evidence that postage has been paid. Stamps can be miniature works of art, treasured keepsakes, and rare collectibles.

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Social Media Sites

Stay connected with the museum through our social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

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Virtual Exhibitions

The Museum is divided into galleries that explore America’s postal history from colonial times to the present. Visitors learn how mail has been transported, consider the importance of letters, and explore the creation and wondrous diversity of postage stamps.

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SI In Your Classroom Lesson: Learning from Letters

Students evaluate mail as a mode of communication, create a mail system in the classroom and “send” letters, and analyze letters for information about the senders. A mathematics activity even has students “decode” a barcode into the ZIP code it represents. This issue commemorates the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

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SI In Your Classroom Lesson: Portraits, Visual and Written

The lessons in this Smithsonian “In Your Classroom” introduce students to the life and work of an American author, either Louisa May Alcott or Samuel Clemens (also known as Mark Twain). The materials may be used in a full unit on Little Women, Tom Sawyer, or Huckleberry Finn. A children’s biography (Cornelia Meigs’s Invincible Louisa or William Anderson’s River Boy, for example) might complement the autobiographical piece. Or, you might adapt the lesson ideas to the study of another author.

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Postcards – The “Write Stuff”

Over the decades, the practice of sending vacation postcards to friends and family evolved and continues to be popular. Young students can practice their writing and grammar skills through this lesson on postcard writing.

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