Children's Lives at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This Library of Congress Student Discovery Set is here to put history into your hands. It brings together historical artifacts and one-of-a-kind documents from the collections of the Library of Congress. Interactive tools let you zoom in for close examination, draw to highlight interesting details, and make notes about what you discover. There’s no single right answer, only new discoveries to be made.


The dawn of the twentieth century was a time of great change in the United States, and many of those changes can be seen in the lives of the nation’s children. This set brings together photographs, film, and books that shed light on the ways in which children worked, played, learned, and made sense of the world. Especially suitable for early grades.


This set is intended for open-ended primary source analysis by students. A Teacher’s Guide with background information, teaching ideas, and additional resources is available on the Library’s Web site for teachers, loc.gov/teachers.