For Educators | For Kids | For Researchers
Resources: Welcome Educators
Thank you for taking the time to consider how the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum can fit into your classroom or home school experience. We are always excited by the opportunity to share Lew Wallace history. We hope that by helping teachers and parents integrate the museum experience into the school, you, your students, and their families will see the Museum as an effective resource. Although Lew Wallace is known as an important figure in Indiana history for his role in the Civil War and his authorship of Ben-Hur, he was truly a Renaissance Man and a study of his life can follow many potential avenues. We offer the following information and activities as background and as a starting point to make a visit to the Museum more than an isolated event. We hope that by providing better links to Indiana history and by integrating the visit into the classroom, a trip to the Museum will be a worthwhile educational event instead of a “day off” from school.
School Tours
To schedule a group tour to the Museum, call 765.362.5769 or with your school or group’s name, a contact person, a contact phone number, and a few potential dates and times for your visit. Student admission is $1. Teachers and chaperones are admitted free. Scholarships are available for children who need assistance. At the time the tour reservation is made, teachers will need to indicate the number of scholarships needed for each class. For out-of-county schools, admission is $1 per student and $2 for adult chaperones.
Field trip admission assists with the rising cost of museum operations, and also provides an opportunity to teach students the value of history and heritage. Proper stewardship of community treasures is a challenge without sufficient funding.
If you are interested in visiting more than one Montgomery County museum, please contact the Visitors Bureau at 765.362.5200 or 800-866.3973 or . They can coordinate your visit to multiple museums so you only have to make one phone call!
Educational Materials
Background for Teachers
Biography of General Lew Wallace
General Lew Wallace’s Study
Morgan’s Raid
Children’s Books About Lew Wallace
Classroom Activities
Jobs
Timeline
Vocabulary
Architecture Terms
Map It: Morgan’s Raid
Writing a Review
Museum Activities
Lew Wallace Puzzle
What did you find?
Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger Hunt Answers
Miscellaneous
Museum Rules
Feedback and Evaluation
Indiana Standards
Click here for an Adobe PDF of all the activities.
Click here to get Adobe Acrobat Reader for free!
Webpages for Students
As class preparation for a visit or if you are unable to bring your class to the Museum, please send your students to the For Kids section of our website. They can access it from the <http://www.ben-hur.com> homepage by going to "Resources" on the toolbar at the top of any page, and then clicking on the "For Kids" link. This portion of the website is designed for upper elementary and middle school students to give them an overview of Lew Wallace's biography. Beyond the overview page are pages devoted to six of Lew Wallace's "careers." These pages provide a more detailed description about what it was like to be a general or an author in Lew Wallace's time, and they provide links to other related sites. A worksheet is available to guide the students through the site.
Developing Activities!
Would you be interested in activities about…
Geology
Identify the rocks in the wall on the west side of the Study grounds and classify them.
Botany
Identify the trees and plants currently growing at the Study. Use photos of the Ben-Hur Beech Tree as an example of the lifecycle of a tree. Discuss which trees might have been chosen by Lew Wallace.
Butterflies
A summer activity observing butterfly behavior at the Butterfly Bush in front of the Study. Learn about the lifecycle of the butterfly.
Local Lew
Learn about Lew Wallace’s impact on Crawfordsville and Montgomery County history.
- His marriage into the Elston family and its influence in the area through banking and commerce.
- His leadership of the Montgomery County Guard in Zouave tactics before the Civil War that made them one of the most well respected militia groups in Indiana.
- The reputation of Ben-Hur was used as the basis for a local fraternal organization that eventually became a nationwide life insurance company.
His fame after his death brought thousands of visitors to Crawfordsville.
The Idea Shop
What else would you like to know about Lew Wallace?
Do you have any great for activities?
We would greatly appreciate your contributions! If you develop activities that you would like to share with us and with other teachers and parents, please tell us about them. If possible, we can post them on this website and send them to interested educators.
We want the Museum to be useful to you, so please let us know how we can help. Feel free to contact us at 765-362-5769 or .
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