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The
Outreach Center has developed an exciting multimedia curriculum kit for
elementary grades, The Cultures and Peoples of the Arab World. The kit
comes in two boxes. One contains clothing from different countries,
artifacts, jewelry, music, wood puzzles, videos, and maps. The book box
includes workbooks, coloring books, picture/story books, non-fiction
books about Arab lands and people, and a manual for teachers packed
full with informational background notes, curriculum material and
student activities. The Center has two virtually identical kits, which
may be borrowed for a period of one month by requesting schools.
If you would like to order the Arab World curriculum kit, please click here.
The
Outreach Center has created a curriculum kit in multiple copies that
can be sent to elementary and high school classrooms to encourage teachers and schools
to include treatment of Ramadan in schools' celebrations of
multicultural holidays. We include literature and lesson plans
appropriate for students, an explanation and activity for
understanding the lunar cycle and timing of Ramadan, descriptions of
festivities around the Muslim world with recipes from different
cultures traditionally prepared during Ramadan, and a craft project
based on the Egyptian fanoos, or Ramadan lantern.
If you would like to order the Ramadan kit, please click here.
Building
on our most recent Middle Eastern Resources curriculum packet, we have
created a multimedia tie-in module on Ottoman social and cultural life.
These resources supplement the political treatment of the Ottoman
Empire in world history at the high school level. The musical component
of this curriculum is based on a presentation developed by noted
Turkish musicologist Nilgun Dogrusoz for an educators' workshop
presented by the Outreach Center in June 2002.
The Ottoman Empire curriculum kit is ready for use. If you would like to pilot and evaluate this project, click here.
We
have produced a series of five segments on the history, politics and
cultures of Muslim Central Asia based on a lecture series presented
jointly by the Outreach Center, the National Resource Center for
Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at Harvard and Primary
Source. The five lectures covered topics including the Mongols,
Timurids, Mughals, diverse experiences of Islam, and political
development of the region and featured noted scholars Ali Asani,
Wheeler Thackston, Beatrice Manz, Tom Barfield and Laura Adams. These
videos are available from our lending library; please contact the
Outreach Center for more information. Supplementary materials on
Central Asia are also available from Harvard’s Russian, East European and Central Asian National Resource Center.
If you would order the Islam in Central Asia kit, please click here.
With
support from Penzey's Spices, we have developed a short curriculum unit
on the trade in and uses of spices across the eastern hemisphere.
Students work extensively with maps to understand how the spice trade
illustrates connections among cultures over time. Penzey's will provide
small samples of different spices so that students can experience their
smell and taste, create their own multisensory maps and integrate
information on botany, geography, economics, mathematics, history and
human cultures.
To order the Spices kit, click here.
We
have developed a comprehensive culture kit on Afghanistan so that
students can come to appreciate the history and cultural traditions of
Afghanistan as well as the repercussions of recent events and the
process of rebuilding the country. The kit includes extensive
background information on Afghanistan’s geography, history and culture,
with lesson plans and many artifacts illustrating different aspects of
Afghan life. The Afghanistan kit is ready to be piloted and evaluated
in the classroom.
To pilot the Afghanistan kit in your classroom, click here.
Please note that these kits are NOT available at this time.
This
multimedia curriculum kit focuses on understanding the world of Islam
through literature, visual arts and the sound arts. The curriculum kit
will include video and audio materials (including Quran recitations,
Sufi and popular music), musical instruments, textiles and examples of
folk art, as well as high-quality visual reproductions of Islamic art
and approachable literary works in translation. Lesson plans will guide
teachers in the use of the kit, which will be piloted through teacher
workshops and in selected classrooms.
To
counter a preponderance of emphasis and materials available on the Arab
world to the exclusion of other Muslim peoples, The Outreach Center is
developing, in dynamic collaboration with The Children's Museum, Boston
(a Title VI NRC for East Asian Studies) and the African Studies Center
at Boston University (a Title VI NRC for African Studies), a
state-of-the-art curriculum kit and teachers' materials on the diverse
experiences and cultures of Muslims worldwide. This kit will contain
artifacts and information from the diverse Islamic cultures and
communities of six different countries: Egypt, Turkey, India,
Indonesia, Senegal and the United States.
If you are an educator
with a particular interest in one or more of the countries that will be
part of the World of Muslim Kids Kit, please contact us at
cmesoc@fas.harvard.edu to become part of our curriculum creation and piloting/evaluation team.
Copyright © 2007 The President and Fellows of Harvard College