A wealth of Arkansas state history is at your fingertips at the Historic Arkansas Museum, where some of the oldest buildings in the state live. Travel back to the 1800s with carefully restored and furnished houses and businesses that highlight the state’s early decades in all their rough-and-ready glory. Weave through their permanent exhibits for interactive fun and local history celebrating Arkansas’ past. Rotating exhibitions showcase Arkansas-made artifacts and modern artists.
Student Experiences
Field trips are available for K-12 students with hands-on opportunities for each grade level. The historic home tour transports guests back to the founding of Little Rock, where they learn about settlers’ circumstances and daily life as they tour the historic buildings. A guided museum visit takes students through galleries of local art and helps them learn the stories behind the pieces. Grades K-6 can get hands-on with a 2.5-hour school fair with special programming and fresh themes each fall and spring season.
Immersive Learning
Interactive, choose-your-own-adventure tours let educators mix and match a broad range of interactive experiences for students—from a print shop to wagon wheel assembly, then to food preservation and beyond. Many activities include teacher packets with frameworks for grade-level learning standards, historical context, activities, and primary source analysis. These packets support more comprehensive learning and engage students pre- and post-trip.
The museum offers educator resources to help support at-home and in-class learning. Do-at-home activities offer fun learning opportunities covering topics such as reading, history, math, engineering, and more. Their loan box program lets teachers bring a piece of museum learning into the classroom. Each box focuses on a different theme, providing reproduction objects so students can directly interact with historical pieces.
The Arkansas Traveler features a story, a tune, and a painting from the 1850s that helps students connect with the region’s culture and history. Slavery: A Child’s View includes items referenced in the included primary and secondary sources, including stories of enslaved children. Students can learn Arkansas music history with fiddle music and a square dance lesson, then learn about the history behind them. Live a day in the life of an Arkansas pioneer with the Farmstead Natural Resources box full of tools and artifacts. Perfect for younger students, their Charlie’s Cloak box is inspired by the book Charlie Needs a Cloak—full of wool, lessons on sheep, and the Arkansas pioneer experience.
The Historic Arkansas Museum lovingly preserves and promotes Arkansas’ natural and cultural heritage. Testaments to Arkansas’ past, both big and small, have stories to tell. Their educational resources support lifelong lessons that do more than teach. Students will go on a journey with plenty of exciting, interactive opportunities to learn about and experience Arkansas’ past. There is no better place to take an Arkansas history field trip.
