History at Home

​Looking for some educational projects you can do at home? Here are some ideas and resources to connect learners of all ages to local history.

Share your creations with us online by tagging them #LosAlamosHistory!

Shorter Projects

  • .Document history as it happens: Create a daily journal sharing the news of the day and your thoughts and feelings. Journaling can help you to get through difficult times. Journals are also an incredible resource for historians. Consider donating your journal to the Historical Society when you're done. (Hat tip to the Northfield Historical Society in Minnesota for the idea.)
  • Write a poem: What makes Los Alamos special? Express your thoughts in a poem. Peggy Pond Church, a poet who lived in Los Alamos, might be an inspiration for your poetry.
  • Create family history: Interview someone in your family about their life. Talk to them in person, over the phone, or over video chat. Start by writing down some questions before you interview them. Write down their answers, or even better, get their permission to make an audio or video recording of your chat. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has some great ideas for questions you can ask.
  • Taste history: Cook a favorite family recipe. Talk about what makes the recipe special and if it's changed over time.
  • Curate your own exhibit: Do you collect anything? Get your collection out of the shoebox and into your own personal exhibit. Be the curator by planning how you want to display the artifacts and making artifact labels for them. There are great examples of artifact labels from last year's Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing Competition.
  • Tour architecture: Take a walk around your neighborhood and notice the architecture. Look at the little details. How are the houses alike? Different? Draw a picture of your house. Do you know when it was built?
  • Make your mark: Create a historical marker for your neighborhood, home, or even rooms inside your house. What important or interesting event happened here? Share the facts and some exciting stories.
  • Take a walk through history: Follow the historical markers in the downtown area on a tour through history. Or take the tour from home on your phone. Call (505) 515-0004 and enter stops 4501# through 4514#. After taking the tour, write and record your own stops on a tour of your favorite places in Los Alamos.
  • Predict the future: What do you think Los Alamos will be like next year? In five years, or ten? What will change in your life during that time? Use a website like FutureMe or Letter 2 Future to write an email to yourself in the future—you pick the date! In your email, predict what you think might be the same and what you think might be different in the world and in your life.
  • Drive to the past: Check out the homestead driving tour and learn about 17 families who homesteaded here before the town of Los Alamos was created. Hop in the car and visit all seven sites in one trip, or explore the different sites over several explorations on foot or bicycle.
  • Color and find: Connect with Los Alamos' past with this coloring page and word search from Meet Bences Gonzales, a children's activity book introducing the homesteading era, the Los Alamos Ranch School, the Manhattan Project, and more through the life of a Los Alamos leader.
  • Be a history DJ: Hop into your favorite music program like Spotify or Apple Music and create a playlist for an era of history, a specific year, or even a specific event. What music would have been playing on the secret KRS radio station in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project? What songs capture the spirit of Hispano homesteaders who made homes here at the beginning of the twentieth century? Pick the history you want to illustrate with music and get creative!
  • Time travel for dinner: You have access to that time machine that lets you invite historical figures to a dinner party. Who would you invite from Los Alamos history—Manhattan Project scientists, Ancestral Pueblo elders, Ranch School students? Write out your guest list, plan some dinner music, and create the perfect menu to start a historic conversation.
  • Fashion time travel: Get out an old family photo album and look through it. Talk with your family about the people and events remembered in the album. Choose a few of your favorite photos and then recreate the styles! Can you dress like you did in that photo of you as a kid? Can you find something in your closet that matches Grandma and Grandpa's amazing style in that photo when they were a young couple?
  • Share the love: Who's taught you a life lesson that's been really important to you? Who do you look up to? Get creative and make your own postcard or decorate a letter telling that person what you've learned from them. Let them know how important they are to your own personal life history.
  • Make a time capsule: Put together a small collection of objects, photographs, news articles, drawings, personal top ten lists, and other things that capture what this moment in history means to you. How do you feel? What are your favorite things about 2020? What's unique about right now? Write up a list of everything you're including and why. Find a container or recycle a cardboard box or cylinder and decorate it however you like, being sure to include your name and the date. Seal it up and stash it someplace safe (maybe in a closet or under your bed) to open up in the future. Maybe set yourself a digital reminder to open the time capsule in 5, 10, or 20 years!
  • Think about resilience: Visit our online exhibit Resilience and Regrowth: Twenty Years After Cerro Grande. As you explore the exhibit, talk about the questions in green on each page. What does resilience mean to you? What can we learn from this part of our history?

Longer Projects

Iconic Buildings in Minecraft

Fire up Minecraft and create a version of an iconic Los Alamos building. Share your screenshot or video tour with us with the hashtag #LosAlamosHistory on Facebook and Instagram.

You might choose to build Fuller Lodge, originally built for the Los Alamos Ranch School in 1929. Or the Romero Cabin, where Victor and Refugio Romero and their family homesteaded at the beginning of the twentieth century. You could also create a newer Los Alamos building that’s important to you—maybe your school, or even Ashley Pond. It’s up to you to pick an iconic building from Los Alamos, past or present, and build it yourself! If you’d like to play in The Sims or another game that allows you to build your own building, go for it.

Here are some photos of a few historic buildings in Los Alamos:
Here are some examples of historical buildings recreated in Minecraft to get you started:

Museum of My Los Alamos

What does Los Alamos mean to you? Create your own personal museum that shares your answer to that question. Create a virtual museum online (younger children might prefer to sketch out a museum on paper) and share your museum with us on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #LosAlamosHistory.

A great museum starts with an organizing question. Start your museum by thinking about what Los Alamos means to you. How would you share your answer with someone who you’ve never met and has never been to Los Alamos? What sorts of things are important to you about Los Alamos—History? Nature? People? Places? Decide on 3–5 major themes to illustrate your answer to the question. Consider creating your own questions to answer for each of your major themes. Then create your museum, sharing photographs, objects, videos, and stories.

There are many places to create a website for free online, including Google Sites, Weebly, and Wix. These sites will also share tutorials with you explaining how to create your site.

Here are some examples of online museum exhibits to get you started: 

Family History Interview

Be a historian for your own family history. Record an interview with someone in your family, maybe interviews with more than one family member, and use these interviews to create a documentary. Make sure you get permission from the people you interview before sharing the documentary with the hashtag #LosAlamosHistory on Facebook or Instagram.

What should your documentary be about? It’s up to you! You could collect favorite family stories or ask for stories you’ve never heard about childhood adventures. You might collect a snapshot of how different people in your family are reacting to the global events of today. Or ask an older family member what their life was like when they were your age and compare your experiences. You can record audio or video for the interview (a phone or computer can do this), and ask the person you're interviewing for permission to record your interview. Be sure to say the date and to introduce yourself and who you’re talking to at the beginning of the interview. Edit the audio or video if you want, you can even add family photos or music. Upload your finished documentary to YouTube, Soundcloud, Google, or another online sharing site.

Some tips for creating your family history interview:

Links to More Local Resources


  • At Home in Los Alamos—a Facebook page with ideas and activities brought to you by Los Alamos community organizations
  • Take it Outside!—from the Pajarito Environmental Education Center

​In creating History at Home, the Los Alamos Historical Society is supported by a generous grant
​from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New Mexico Humanities Council.