Lesson Plans

49 Result(s)
Grade Range
K-5
Music from Across America

Students examine and listen to a variety of forms of music to learn about the cultural, geographic, and stylistic diversity available within the United States.

Grade Range
K-5
The Meaning Behind the Mask

Students explore the cultural significance of masks, discuss the use of masks in stories, and then investigate the role masks play in ceremonies and on special occasions in various African cultures.

Grade Range
K-5
Stories in Quilts

Quilts can be works of art as well as stories through pictures. They also tell a story about their creators and about the historical and cultural context of their creation through the choices made in design, material, and content.

Grade Range
K-5
Aesop and Ananse: Animal Fables and Trickster Tales

In this unit, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures. They will learn how both types of folktales employ various animals in different ways to portray human strengths and weaknesses and to pass down wisdom from one generation to the next.

Grade Range
K-5
Where I Come From

Students take research into their heritage a step beyond the construction of a family tree, traveling through cyberspace to find our what's happening in their ancestral homelands today.

Grade Range
K-5
History in Quilts

The lessons in this unit are designed to help your students recognize how people of different cultures and time periods have used cloth-based art forms (quilts) to pass down their traditions and history.

Grade Range
K-5
Fables and Trickster Tales Around the World

The following lesson introduces children to folk tales through a literary approach that emphasizes genre categories and definitions. In this unit, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures.

Grade Range
K-5
What Makes a Hero?

Who do we look up to and why? What constitutes a heroic action? After completing this lesson plan, students will be able to describe what makes a hero in various contexts.

Grade Range
K-5
The Royal Art of Benin

This lesson plan introduces students to art of the West African kingdom of Benin, which flourished from the 12th or 13th to the end of the 19th centuries in what is now southern Nigeria. Students learn about how the royal power of the king of Benin was communicated through brass plaques and use symbolism to create their own paper plaques.