Wildlife Education Trunks

Bring the outside into your classroom with these unique hands-on, interdisciplinary teaching tools! These education trunks are designed to educate students while building on fundamental disciplines like math, art, social studies, science, language arts, and physical education. Each trunk contains:

Educator guide with background information, lesson plans, and K-12 activities
Hand-on items such as furs, videos, prepped activity supplies, books, and more

How To Reserve Trunks

Education trunks are available free to educators in Maryland for a 1-2 week period, depending on availability. Please contact the location nearest you to reserve an education trunk (see map with trunk locations and contacts at the bottom of the page). You will be responsible for picking up and dropping off the education trunk(s) at their appropriate location.

Types of Education Trunks Available:

White-tailed Deer Education Trunk

Learn more about one of our most common mammals: the white-tailed deer! The trunk includes: an educator’s guide, children’s books, a deer sound CD, deer hide, antler, antler buttons, DVDs, a track mold, scat replica, and replica skull with jawbone. Also included is a Project Wild guide, a PowerPoint on white-tailed deer, and a jawbone aging key.

Black Bear Education Trunk

Black bears are the largest land mammal in Maryland. Learn more about these fascinating animals with our education trunk. The recently updated trunk includes: curriculum guide, a black bear hide, track mold, black bear puppet, skull and scat replica, children’s books, Outdoors Maryland DVDs on black bears, Project Wild guide, a PowerPoint on black bears, and prepped activities to teach about bears.

Furbearer Education Trunk

This education trunk is designed to provide hands-on material and activities to teach about the 14 species of furbearers found in Maryland. Furbearers in Maryland include the beaver, bobcat, coyote, fisher, gray fox, long-tailed weasel, red fox, mink, muskrat, nutria, opossum, raccoon, river otter, and striped skunk. The curriculum guide focuses on the history of the fur trade, biology and ecology of Maryland’s furbearers and management of furbearers.

The trunk provides ready-made lessons for educating students in grades K-12. The contents of the trunk includes: curriculum guide, 11 furs, replica skulls, track replicas, scat replicas, books, a raccoon hand puppet, Outdoors Maryland DVDs, supplies to run activities, and a PowerPoint related to Maryland’s furbearers.

Turkey Education Trunk

This K-12 education trunk focuses on wild turkey biology and management.

The trunk contains curriculum guide, decoys of a hen and jake (juvenile) wild turkey, gobbler call, replica skull, replica egg, replica scat, a turkey sound CD, supplies to teach about turkeys, a wild turkey puppet, a wild turkey PowerPoint, and books about wild turkeys.

Growing Up WILD Education Kits

Growing Up Wild Educator Kits - Collage of contents

These hands-on kits are designed to complement Growing Up WILD activities. The kits contain a variety of early childhood education tools that align with the following Growing Up WILD activities: Deep Blue Sea, Fishing Fun, Looking at Leaves, Less is More and Who Lives in a Tree. To learn more about these kits, please check here to visit our Growing Up WILD Educator Kit page.

Project EduBat Trunk

Project EduBat Logo Project EduBat has generously provided a bat education trunk filled with materials to teach about bats. At this time, the Project EduBat trunk is only available in Abingdon, Annapolis, Baltimore City, Cumberland, and Gaithersburg. To learn more, click here.

Aquatic Invasive Species Education Trunk

Aquatic Invasive Species Education Trunk contents. Teach students about aquatic invasive species of the Mid-Atlantic with our new education trunk! The trunk contains over 40 lesson plans and hands-on resources to teach about the many aspects of aquatic invasive species including how they are introduced, how they impact natural areas and students, and ways to engage in action projects to eradicate and educate about invasive species. Click here for more information about the Aquatic Invasive Species Education Project.