ND250 offers a growing collection of classroom-ready resources designed to help teachers and students explore and celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. From lesson plans and primary source materials to interactive activities and project ideas, these tools support engaging, learning across grade levels. Schools are invited to embrace America’s 250th by connecting national history with North Dakota stories, encouraging critical thinking, creativity, and civic pride in classrooms statewide.
Teacher/Student Resources
MY AMERICA is a nationwide, youth-driven art and civic engagement campaign that will honor our past, reflect on our present, and inspire our future. Through artistic expression, civic action, and public commemoration, MY AMERICA will empower young people across all 50 states to reflect on what unity, democracy, and being American means today by creating a large mosaic of an American flag made up of thousands of individual tiles with messages, drawings, poems. Upon its completion, we expect the flag mosaic to be 150 feet long x 80 feet wide, half the size of a football field.
Click here to receive a free USA Flag Kit for your classroom. Each kit will contain the fabric tiles and a pre-paid postage form to return the tiles and instructions.
One kit per teacher. To receive more kits, each additional teacher must complete the signup form.
Deadline: Completed USA Flag Kits must be returned using the pre-paid postage by Thursday, October 1, 2026.
Lesson Plans
High School Lesson
Produced by Close Up, these eight classroom-ready lesson plans ask students to examine and reflect on our country’s foundational principles.
Extension: Consider adapting or modifying these lessons to incorporate the North Dakota Constitution and its Preamble or Declaration of Rights.
8th Grade Lesson
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s lesson exploring the transformative impact of the transcontinental railroad highlights the role it played in connecting the nation. Tied to the America250 nationwide commemoration of the country’s 250th anniversary, the lesson encourages reflection on how infrastructure projects have shaped unity and progress in the United States.
Extension: Connect this lesson to North Dakota’s statehood in 1889, showing how railroad expansion fueled settlement and economic growth in the northern Plains, establishing the state’s position in a growing nation.
4th Grade Lesson
The Bill of Rights Institute has BRI Jr., an elementary level curriculum with 10 lessons and multiple activities spanning the Colonial era to post-Civil War Reconstruction. These lessons offer lots of choice on how your class can explore the early development of the United States.
Extension: Create a timeline of major early U.S. history events and include significant events in North Dakota’s timeline such as the Louisiana Purchase or statehood.