Visit the Outreach Center on FacebookCurriculum Kits
Available Curriculum Kits
Celebrating Nowruz
Our newest resource for educators features the New Year traditions of the Persian cultural world. The Celebrating Nowruz Kit consists of a twenty-page curriculum text that introduces the holiday with several hands-on activities that extend the curriculum's themes and allows for students to reflect on their own traditions. The physical kit comes with several books and a dvd for younger students, as well as some specialty items for use with the curriclum's activities.
If you would like to order the Celebrating Nowruz Kit, click here.
The Cultures and Peoples of the Arab World
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.
Ramadan
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.
Ottoman Empire Curriculum
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.
Islam in Central Asia Workshops Film Project
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.
Spices
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.
Afghanistan Curriculum
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.
Curriculum Kits Under Development
Please note that these kits are NOT available at this time.
Islam through the Arts Culture Kit
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.
World of Muslim Kids Workshops and Culture Kit
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.