Junior Ranger Challenge -- Make a Trading Card

Dear Ranger-in-Training,

Congratulations on completing your first challenges! But your job isn't done yet.

One of the tools we use as park rangers are trading cards. Maybe you've seen a trading card - it fits in your pocket and usually it has a picture on one side and words on the other. Look at the pictures below. Pretty cool, right?

 

 

I use trading cards to tell stories. See the picture of George Washington on that white horse? The horse's name was Blueskin and he was General Washington's second favorite horse. His first favorite horse was named Nelson. Nelson was very steady in battle. Blueskin - not so much. But, Blueskin looked good in the picture.

Now it is your turn to make something you can use to tell a few stories about the Liberty Bell. And, it's time to finish the Junior Ranger Challenge training program.

Your friend,
Ranger Renee

 

Your challenge: Design a trading card about the Liberty Bell

 

Directions

1. Read the information below about the Liberty Bell.
2. On a piece of paper, draw a picture that would be good for the front of a trading card about the Liberty Bell. It can be a picture of the Liberty Bell, or maybe you want to draw something connected to its history.
3. Turn your paper over and choose what information you want to put on the back of your card. You can't write any more than 50 words (yes, you have to count them).

 

The Liberty Bell

Read the facts below and choose which ones you want to write on the back of your trading card.

• Made of a metal called bronze
• Made in Philadelphia in 1753 by John Pass and John Stow
• Made to be the bell for the Pennsylvania State House (now called Independence Hall)
• Rang to call lawmakers (like Ben Franklin!) to their meetings in the State House
• Rang to call the townspeople together to hear the reading of the news
• Might have just worn out after almost 90 years of hard use - no one wrote down when or why it first cracked
• First crack was very thin -- no wider than a hair -- but it made the bell sound bad
• Big, wide crack is really the repair job!
• Repair job didn't last long. A second crack developed on February 23, 1846
• Has a message of liberty around the top: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof"
• First called "the Liberty Bell" by people fighting to end slavery in the United States in the1830s
• Used as a symbol by women fighting for the right to vote
• Used by the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s as a symbol
• Visited by millions of people each year

 

BONUS! Design a card about YOU

1. On a piece of paper, draw a picture that is about you. It can be a self-portrait, or it can be something that tells us about you (like a soccer ball, or a TV, or a book).
2. Turn your paper over and choose what information you want to write on the back of your card. It can be about your family or what you like to do -- what makes you unique. You can't write any more than 50 words (yes, you have to count them).