VI History Activities

The instructional material offered on TeachVIHistory.com are called “activities”. They center around encouraging the use of primary sources to explore, discover and investigate US Virgin Islands history, and helping students develop research skills. Each activity includes primary source(s), a brief historical background, suggested teaching instructions, an analysis worksheet, and discussion points. Some activities include extension projects. Teachers may use the activities in their entirety or pick primary sources and associated discussion points that best suit their lesson plans. Are you ready to start exploring US Virgin Islands history using primary sources? Choose a grade level to get started. 

Activities by Grade Level

Lower Elementary

Engage students by exploring cultural objects, games, chores from the past, modes of transportation, Amerindian tools, and more.

Upper Elementary

Learn about Amerindian culture, story telling traditions, sale of the DWI, campaigning & voting, censuses, historical figures, and more.

Junior High School

Question the past using documents, ship records, maps, newspapers, runaway notices, letter about the slave revolt, and more.

High School

Interpret and discuss history through records, poetry, treaties, judgements for suffrage, paintings of plantations, manumissions, and more.

All Activities >

Featured Activities

Runaway Notice in St. Thomas Tidende, St. Thomas, 14 December 1825

Activity Type:
Newspapers provide abundant information about the people and communities they serve. On their pages can be found accounts of local and international events, government proclamations, notices of happenings, arrivals and departures, marriages, deaths, items for sale, public notices, international events, and the like. The first newspaper was published in…
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Prohibition and St. Croix Rum

Activity Type:
In January 1919, the US Congress ratified the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages. The United States purchased the Danish West Indies, which included St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, from Denmark just a few years earlier. The economy of the islands, in…
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A look at transportation in Christiansted, St. Croix in 1941

Activity Type:
The way people get around the US Virgin Islands, and the world, has changed a lot over the last 100 years. Horse-drawn carts, horse drawn covered carriages and people on foot, would later be joined by bicycles, then early automobiles. Horse-drawn vehicles would eventually be completely replaced by automobiles….
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