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Humanities
Active
Learning Projects in Humanities:
Make
a Town - Kids Learning Activity
K - 4th Grade
Make Town has houses and stores to be cut out of paper
and made into three-dimensional buildings. As they
arrange the building into a town, kids plan yards,
streets, parks and a downtown. Kids learn to think of
what a town needs to work and why they are built in
certain ways.
Odyssey Online
4th - 12th grades
There are quizzes and games, with pictures of genuine
objects from museums, on the uses of the objects in
ancient life. Well designed and fun it has information on
Greece, Rome, Egypt, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Near
East.
Pirates!
4 - 8th grade
Adventurous and romantic--this history of pirates
includes a high seas adventure and the biographies of
several pirates.
Letter
Sounds
Pre-schoolers learn letter sound relationships
playing a free educational alphabet game using the
modalities--sight, sound, kinesthetics--that a computer
makes possible. A pre-reading activity for young children
to learn beginning phonics. Free software.
Seeds of Change Garden
Grades 3 - 8
Discusses both botanic and cultural aspects of food, with
emphasis on the differences between New World and Old
World plants. The site contains gardening information for
kids, and recipes. The recipes include some that
originated in either the New World or the Old World
before contact, and so contain only foods known in that
area at the time.
Make
a Village - Kids Learning Activity
3 - 6th Grade
Make a Village has a church, an apartment house and
several houses to make into a village or town. After
cutting them out and assembling the structures, they can
be arranged into a village. Students learn how town can
be planned in advance, or how some just grow; how traffic
patterns flow; how city services are delivered; and how
transportation an zoning affect towns and cities.
The Incredible Art
Department
Grade 3 - 8
Pictures to inspire students, and specific activities for
students to make their own art using a variety of
techniques.
Japanese Laquerware Art
Lesson
2nd-6th grade
Using paper plates, students make a "lacquer"
plate with a traditional Japanese design.
Relief Block Prints
4th grade up
Block prints in a Japanese style, made with plaster of
Paris. (Other materials could be used.) Messy.
Islamic Art/Eraser Prints
A geometric design is made on an art gum eraser, then it
is printed and rotated 1/4 turn (4 times) to make a
larger design, often unexpectedly interesting.
Dress the Part
Students “dress” people from different social classes in Colonial
Williamsburg. The strong emphasis on social class and the
material goods associated with each class—you knew instantly what
status anyone occupied—is made very clear. The privileges and
restraints of each social class are implied in their dress;
upper-class women wore more, and fancier, clothing, which meant that
they had to be more careful of how they looked and what they did so
as not to damage it, and it seems their clothing was less
comfortable. However, they had to do very little work.
But no one had much choice—you dressed, and lived, according to your
class.
Make
a Farm - Kids Learning Activity
K - 4th Grade
Make a Farm has a barn, silo, chicken coop, fences and
other pieces to put together to make a farm. Kids plan
what animals to raise and what crops are needed to feed
both people and animals. A way for kids to learn about
where food comes from.
At Home in the Heartland
A source on immigrants and others in Chicago, it gives
brief biographies and outlines choices individuals had to
make, an intersection of personal goals and the times in
which they lived--the Depression, the aftermath of
W.W.II, etc. The stories were apparently gathered from
their descendents, so you get to make the same choices,
and compare to the ones made by the real people. Somewhat
slow, but visually rich. The personal interwoven with the
historical makes it worthwhile.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Only the quiz is interactive, but still an interesting
and important site.
"Cave Painting"
Earth-tone pastels to draw animals on rocks, in the style
of cave paintings.
See a real cave filled with prehistoric drawings
The Secret of the Maya
Glyphs (National
Geographic)
Find and read Mayan glyphs in this adventure story.
A little slow to load.
What is a Print?
What is a print? lets the student use a online version of the tools
and techniques in the (often numerous) steps in making different
types of prints—woodcut, lithography, etching and screen printing.
Students are then shown a gallery of museum prints, by various
artists, made with these techniques. The most interesting
examples show how the same print, or series of prints, can give very
different effects with different inking, and other techniques.
Anglo-Apache Conflicts 1861-1888
Detailed accounts of conflicts between the Apache
Indians and the white settlers (with the occasional involvement of
Mexicans, and the Mexican Army) in what is now Arizona, from 1861 to
1886. It includes contemporary accounts from people on both sides
(and sometimes third parties) of each incident, maps, biographies of the
major players and a timeline. Interesting, but depressing,
reading.
Tour Egypt
This is the official internet site of The
Ministry of Tourism, Egypt. It is the recipes that make
it interactive, but the rest is interesting too.
Mummy
Another mummy site—from a more aesthetic viewpoint. Using
interactive computer animation, you use classic techniques to make
an Egyptian mummy. It shows both the techniques used and their
cultural context.
Underground Railroad
As a runaway slave, you make decisions to try to avoid danger on
your way North, from a ‘slave state’ to ‘Free States’ (which don’t
allow slavery). Even in a Free State, the law said that you
could be caught and returned to your “owner”. Even worse, by
law (see the Dred Scott decision), all legal authorities—Justice of
the Peace, policeman, etc.—were obliged to help catch and return
you, no matter what their personal belief about slavery. There
were many brutal bounty hunters about, men paid to find and return
ex-slaves like yourself. Can you make the right decisions to
avoid capture?
How to Make a Clay Whistle
How to make a clay whistle—pictures, step by step, how to form a
clay whistle, why the whistle works in terms of air flow. It also
has designs into which the whistles were traditionally made, giving
ideas of other designs for the whistle.
History
Globe - The Jamestown Online Adventure
Play an interactive game as if you were in charge of founding the
Jamestown colony. Would you have made better decisions than
those of the time? If you had been in charge would fewer
colonists have died?
Updated
6/1/2008
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