Wolf Pack Traveling Trunk

White/gray timber wolf walking outside the Rainy Lake Visitor Center, Voyageurs National Park.

NPS

This trunk is a howl of a good time! This trunk includes six lessons, props, pre and post activities, and directions on how to use the trunk. All trunk are free-of-charge. We only ask, that the institute receiving the trunk pay for postage back to the park.

This trunk is aligned with the most current Minnesota State Academic Standards. Recommended grades for this trunk is third through sixth grade. To learn how to check-out a travel truck contact the education room.

For a brief description of each lesson see below.


Pre-Lesson: The Three Little Pigs

Students will listen to the classic story The Three Little Pigs and express how they feel about wolves prior to learning about them.

Lesson 1: Who Wants to be a Wolf Expert?

Students will be grouped into several “wolf packs,” named after real wolf packs in Voyageurs National Park. They will participate in a game show activity to learn basic facts about wolves and wolf adaptations.

Lesson 2: Season of Starvation

Students will learn about food webs and the roles of scavengers, predators, and prey. They will take the identity of animals that live in Voyageurs National Park and create a winter food web.

Lesson 3: When Wolves Hunted Caribou

Students will study the changes in plant and animal communities over the last 200 years. They will research different issues that have affected Minnesota and present their findings through a story and poster.

Lesson 4: Eight Trips Around the Sun

Students will learn what the life of a wolf encompasses and the many dangers a wolf faces. Students take on the life of a wolf—beginning with birth, then playing a game of chance that ends at the “Happy Hunting Grounds.”

Lesson 5: Do You Speak Wolf?

Students will learn about body language and how wolves used it to communicate through a game of charades. They will also gain knowledge of ranking within wolf packs by matching descriptions of ranks with their title.

Lesson 6: The Hunt

Students will learn about how wolves hunt and the strategies they use to catch prey by participating in an active game that requires room, indoors or outdoors, for the wolves to hunt.

Post-Lesson: The True Story of the Three Little Pigs

Students will listen to the story The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and explain how they feel about wolves now that they have learned about them.