In this lesson students will be introduced to the basics of the color wheel, as well as the ways in which artists use color to guide the viewer's attention through a painting's composition.
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.
Students have multiple opportunities to analyze photographs captured during a national photography project about local history and changing places to create their own interpretations and exhibits. These materials were developed as part of a partnership between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Students study the interaction between environment and culture as they learn about three vastly different indigenous groups in a game-like activity that uses vintage photographs, traditional stories, photos of artifacts, and recipes.
This lesson plan looks at the major ideas in the Declaration of Independence, their origins, the Americans’ key grievances against the King and Parliament, their assertion of sovereignty, and the Declaration’s process of revision.
This lesson concentrates on Anne Frank as a writer. After a look at Anne Frank the adolescent, and a consideration of how the experiences of growing up shaped her composition of the Diary, students explore some of the writing techniques Anne invented for herself and practice those techniques with material drawn from their own lives.
In the middle of the 18th century, a series of evangelical religious revival movements swept across colonial America. By examining primary documents from the time, this lesson will introduce students to the ideas, practices, and evangelical spirit of the First Great Awakening.
While the French had kept their end of the bargain by completing the statue itself, the Americans had still not fulfilled their commitment to erect a pedestal. In this lesson, students learn about the effort to convince a skeptical American public to contribute to the effort to erect a pedestal and to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York.
In this lesson plan, students will learn about the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. In the process, they will learn about Chinese culture, as well as improve reading, writing, and researching skills.
