According to its website, the National Air and Space Museum "maintains the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics."

First and foremost, be sure to take a look at the museum's classroom resources. These include teaching resources, such as posters and teaching guides complete with classroom activities, timelines, and more; online activities on geography from outer space, the Wright brothers, African American aviators, and the history of commercial aviation; electronic field trips; distance learning opportunities; and professional development workshops.

Other web resources include online collections and 10 online exhibits on topics from the history of air travel to the U.S.-Soviet space race.

You can also check out the museum's blog if you're interested in the museum's behind-the-scenes stories.

Of course, if you're in the DC area, pay the museum and/or its library a visit. There are two museum locations so be sure to check which houses the artifacts which you want to introduce to your students. There are a wide variety of onsite student activities available—from guided tours to demonstrations. If you're personally interested in aeronautic history, consider attending one of their lectures.

The National Postal Museum is a Smithsonian museum dedicated to sharing the United States' mail communications history.

In the days of e-mail, facebook, Skype, and AOL messaging, the "snail mail" may seem obsolete to many of your students, short of receiving orders purchased online. However, if you can get them to consider what it may have been like to wait weeks, months, or years for the tiniest bits of information from another place, you will be appealing to their historical imagination.

Luckily for those not near DC, the postal museum has a strong online presence, so you don't have to visit to reap the benefits of the institution's offerings. For example, the site offers more than 15 online exhibits, ranging in topic from experimental delivery of mail by missile or stamp art to original war letters or the postal clerks aboard the Titanic. The museum's physical exhibits are also highlighted online, displaying major artifacts and primary sources from the Washington, DC, exhibits. These cover the early mail system, mail and the expanding population, postal transportation, personal communications, and stamps.

Similar resources include an Object of the Month feature and the online collections database, which can conveniently be divided into stamps and other postal artifacts.

The museum provides more than nine free curriculum guides, one of which is even designed for use specifically in ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms.

Other resources easily adaptable to class activities are a "how to" guide for stamp collecting and a site on stamps from ancestral homelands. The latter encourages users to share their own family and stamp stories. Consider asking students to find a stamp from one of their ancestral countries in the collections, and to discover how the image on it relates to that country's history and to that of the U.S.

Other options worth your time include the museum's videos, state-by-state contact information for postal history experts, finding guides for specific collections, online games, and a feature for creating your own stationary.

Of course, if you live in the DC area, you might be able to take your students on a field trip. The museum also offers a library, if your interest is piqued.

Los Alamos National Laboratory exists as a major development center for engineering and scientific national security features. To date, their major responsibility is developing and maintaining systems related to national nuclear determent.

Sadly for history teachers, although not particularly unexpectedly, the laboratory's offerings appropriate to K-12 education are nearly all focused on the sciences. That said, a couple of resources may still be of use to history educators, and teachers should feel welcome to pass on the site information to their science co-workers, particularly those within New Mexico, where the laboratory is located.

What history teachers should take a look at is a history of Los Alamos National Laboratory and national security. Sections include the "Road to Los Alamos," "People of Wartime Los Alamos," "Building the Atomic Bomb," "Postwar to H-Bomb," and "H-Bomb to Stewardship." Each section offers related materials, often primary sources, such as Einstein's letter to President Roosevelt, under "Related Reading." Also included are several image galleries, including one with pictures of the Trinity Test. On the history home page, teachers should also be aware that the "Some Staff" list to the right includes J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, and Stan Ulam, a mathematician and another major figure in the project.

Classes located near Los Alamos, NM, may also be interested in the Bradbury Science Museum, which presents the laboratory's history and current research.

The Federal Highway Administration is a division of the Department of Transportation. The administration's overall goal, according to their website, is to "improve mobility on our nation's highways." Priorities include reduction of traffic congestion, environmental awareness, and roadway safety.

The primary feature of FHWA web resources available to educators is a wide variety of statistical data. Using the information offered will require preparation, as lessons or activities will need to be built around the offered information. Possibilities include asking your students to look at older and recent statistics and make suggestions for the differences between the two data sets. How has U.S. daily life and technology changed in ways which support altered transportation trends?

Two sources which would be optimal for the above suggested activity include Traffic Volume Trends, which date from 1970 through 2009, and the National Household Travel Survey. The latter includes vehicle occupancy, public transportation availability, household travel, mode of transportation, characteristics of drivers with licenses, and more. The years covered are 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, 1995, and 2001.

Other options exist to find articles and data which fit your classroom's needs. These include the National Transportation Library, the FHWA's Publications and Products page, and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The ATF, in its own words, is a law enforcement body created specifically to protect from "violent criminals, criminal organizations, the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, the illegal use and storage of explosives, acts of arson and bombings, acts of terrorism, and the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco products."

The website is almost entirely technical data on substance and equipment regulations. The only item which may be of use to educators or to students conducting related reports is the Reading Room, which offers access to select records frequently requested by the general public. Of note are the Annual Firearms Manufacturers and Export Reports (1998-2007), which catalog the place of origin and numbers of exported firearms, and the 2006-2008 firearms trace data. The latter provides statistics on the number of firearms recovered in any given state, the types of weapons recovered, and the state of origin of these weapons, which may be of use for studying travel between states, area crime, and/or firearm law. The export reports, as opposed to the trace data, require the user to crunch the numbers to develop useful statistics.

The site does include a children's page. However, the majority of this page's content links to sections originally written for an adult audience.