Lesson Plan: Pysanky-inspired Easter Eggs

Before we completely abandon the Easter theme--

Last week in our World Religion class, we made eggs inspired by the Ukrainian technique of decorating eggs called Pysanky.  The traditional art of Pysanky is kind of like batik on eggs; that is, the artists uses wax to over up the parts of the egg they want to keep the existing color, then dip the eggs into increasingly dark dyes.  So, for example, they first cover up what they want to remain white, then dip the egg into yellow dye.  Next they apply more wax to the areas they want to keep yellow (without removing the wax on the white areas), and then dip the egg in the next darkest color (usually orange or light pink).  This continues until the eggs have been dyed their darkest colors, usually dark blue, purple, or black.  After they have dried completely, the artist uses heat to remove the wax, revealing the multi-colored designs the wax have protected over multiple dying cycles.  They can end up being really fabulous.

Obviously, this is a long and involved process that doesn't fit well into a limited class time.  So we kind of faked our way through it by using masking tape instead of wax.  We couldn't get the fine lines of true Pysanky, and with the number of people we had and our time constraints, the students couldn't dip them in too many colors.  But it did give them the idea of how it worked so they could explore it more at home.

But more than simply a craft activity, we also discussed things related to Easter as we dyed our eggs.  For example, I asked them what the life and/or death of Jesus had to do with eggs.  They came up with lots of creative ideas, but then I let them know the answer--nothing, really.  Dying Easter eggs, such as Pysanky, is a hold-over tradition from pagan times.  In the case of the Ukranians, for example, eggs became sacred symbols and talismans because the ancient people worshiped birds because they could fly up to speak with the Sun God, which was their highest diety.  So decorating eggs became part of their spring solstice celebration known in English as Ostara (which is where the word Easter came from).  Because in these celebrations, the eggs were used as a symbol for spring and the rebirth of the Earth, when the Christians came along, they allowed the pagans to continue their old traditions, but just tried to convince them that the rebirth was not of the Earth, but of Jesus.   It was techniques like these--assimilating pre-existing rituals rather than trying to eradicate them--that helped Christianity spread through so many different cultures to become the largest religion in the world today.

However, I also encouraged the student to think of the multiple dying cycles as representing the many different types of trials that Jesus went through during Holy Week, or the last week of his normal human life on Earth.  That is, obviously the focus is on his physical death by crucifiction.  But also during that week, he had to suffer doubts and abandonment (his friends fell asleep during his final hours of freedom), betrayal and denial by his disciples, false claims and judgements by both religious and political authorities,   rejection by the masses who had acclaimed his entrance into Jeruselum only days before, physical torture, and attempts to mock and humiliate him.  His ability to retain his faith and his dignity, and even to forgive those who participated in all these trials, are inspiring lessons in themselves, regardless of what religious beliefs you have about truth and/or meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection.

Anyway, we had a good discussion and created some pretty eggs, even in our rushed and limited situation.  Here are some of the eggs we made:

Curriculum Resource: Teaching Evolution

So if you are a family that doesn't believe in and/or doesn't teach evolution, then you want to skip this post.

But for those who do...

I found a great series of lesson plans about teaching evolution on a website hosted by Indiana University.  A heads up:  these lessons were developed for teaching high school biology.  However, the authors say they could be done with some modifications at the middle school level, and I'm certainly finding some resources that are appropriate for our middle school Ocean Studies coop this year.

There are over 50 lesson plans or mini lessons that are available on line, along with some titles that I suppose they are still developing.  It is broken into two big categories:

• Evolution Patterns
• Evolution Processes

Subcategories under Evolution Patterns are:

• Geological/Paleontological Patterns:  General
• Human Evolution Patterns
• Classification, Hierarchy, Relationships

The subcategories under Evolution Processes are:

• Adaptations, Imperfections, Contrivances
• Variation and Natural Selection
• Speciation
• Macroevolution

So it is a nice, comprehensive approach to the topic, it seems to me.  I haven't looked at all the lessons, but most of the ones I did read had an experiment or hands-on component.  Not all of them are suitable for an at-home science lab, but many of them can be done in a homeschool setting.

So check them out here.

Lesson Plan: Bodhi Day, or Rohatsu in Buddhism

Happy Bodhi Day, or Rohatsu in more traditional Buddhist language.  Rohatsu is the celebration of the day that the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.  The day is recorded as the 8th day of the 12th month, which makes it December 8 for us in the US, but it may be celebrated other days in the Asian or indigenous culture.

At least one of the celebrations of Bodhi Day involves decorating a Bhodhi tree (which is a type of fig tree, or related to the ficus tree) in bright, electric lights, and colorful decorations.   This is yet another of the basic religions that is geared to protecting the immediate spa

So when we opened our study of Buddhism in our World Religion class, we began with practices such as Bodhi Day.  We created trees for students to decorate, either as Rohatsu trees or in their more original format.   You can see the trees below:

Curriculum Resource: Math and Videogames

I've found what looks like an incredible resource.  It is an online, multi-media, interactive, self-paced course on math concepts used in video games.  It was developed by WNET, the public broadcasting network in New York City, for 7th-10th graders, although advanced younger middle schoolers could probably use it as well.

The lesson demonstrates how algebraic concepts, such as linear relationships, rate of change and slope, algebraic and numeric expressions and equations, and graphing transformations, underlie the design and playing of many video game challenges.  Of course, it is interactive, so students are called upon to solve such problem to demonstrate some typical video game techniques.

You can access the entire lesson for FREE at the Teacher's Domain website (although students will have to create an account if they want the lesson to record their input for various challenges).  You can also download a Teacher's Guide about how to support math learning through this lesson at the same location.

Curriculum Resource: Lesson Plan on the Occupy Movement

Last month I posted an NPR podcast and a dubious news item as resources to use for discussing the Occupy movement with students.  Now you can supplement those with an entire lesson plan developed by C-SPAN to drive students to consider this question:  Should students support or oppose the "Occupy" movement?

The lesson plan is build around some C-SPAN news clips and some current articles, pro and con, by some of the top columnists of leading newspapers.  However, it was low, medium, and high read levels indicated, so it can be used with a wide range of ages/abilities.  It is geared towards having a classroom debate, but the materials could be used on an individual basis and lead to writing a pro or con position paper instead.

It has some high quality resources on a timely subject, and the price is right, because it is FREE.  If you are interested, you can download everything from the C-SPAN Classroom Deliberations website.

Studying Hinduism Through Art

In our World Religions class this week, we had as a guest speaker the Interfaith minister Rev. Donna Belt, who specializes in exploring spirituality through art.  She did an exploratory art project with the students that helped them connect parts of Hinduism to their own lives.

We started on the floor, with Donna talking about her own attraction to and study of Hinduism, then heard a version of the famous Hindu story of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god who is the remover of obstacles:

One of the lessons of Ganesh is to focus on possibilities and creative ways to overcome obstacles, rather than focusing on our limitations.  We did a brief mediation on obstacles in our own life, and then moved to an art project on the tables.

Donna gave everyone some watercolor paper with an outline of Ganesh's head on it.  The students were to use not only watercolors, which can flow together in ways we can't control, but also to adapt the watercolors by using them with items that give other unpredictable effects, such as scattering the paint by putting salt on it, adding wrinkles with plastic wrap, or using crayons for wax resist ornamentations.

After the painting was done, we returned to a circle on the floor, and each artist displayed his/her work and explained his/her design and color choices, as well as discussing anything they had discovered about themselves through this process.

They did an excellent join on their paintings, so I wanted to share them below:

Lesson Plan: Celebrating Diwali

Happy Diwali to all!  Diwali actually lasts for five days, but it is the third day that is supposed to be the most special.  That is the day that Hindus light candles and lamps throughout their house in order to attract Lashmi, the goddess of prosperity and good fortune, to come visit.  If she does, the coming year is supposed to be abundant and lucky.

So for our latest World Religions class, where we are studying Hinduism, the students made Diwali diyas, or ceramic candle holders, in preparation for the big event.  I don't know about everyone else, but we lit my son's for dinner tonight, as we ate some homemade chicken tikka masala on basmati brown rice with stir fried vegetables to celebrate.

I forget sometimes how much middle school students still like creating things with clay.  Every time we have a clay project, it is always a big hit.

See below for some of the students' creations:

Lesson Plan: World Religion Dream Catchers

In my short (five-week) World Religion class, we are concentrating on the six religions that have had the most influence on Western culture--Paganism, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam (in order of when they began).   So to help the students keep the order of these religious movements straight, we made World Religion Dream Catchers.

Dream Catchers are a tradition among some Native American tribes (which fall under the Paganism category).  They are a circle created out of a branch of wood, between which string and beads have been strung, creating an open web in the middle.  The idea is that the dream catcher will capture the bad dreams sent to a child, but will allow the good ones through its openings.

Because we are on a restricted budget of both money and time, we made ours out of paper plates, from which I had cut out the centers and punched eight holes around the inner circle of the remaining rim.  I had the students write the names or draw symbols for the six religions (we covered the religious in symbols in class beforehand) on the paper plate rims, and then string yarn from hole to hole IN ORDER of the religion's founding date.  So the first hole was just the start, but then the student would string the yarn through the Paganism hole, then through the Hinduism hole, then Judaism....you get the idea.

Here are some samples of their work.  As always, they were following the same instructions, but came up with some lovely variations.

Lesson Plan: Arabic Scarves

One of the things that we have discussed in our World Religions class are the clothes typically worn by many Muslims.  Aspects of their dress have both cultural and religious significance in Islam.  One of the items of clothing that we have discussed is their use of scarves, particularly for headdresses for both men and women.

In the early days, scarves were extremely practical for the original Muslims, who were mostly desert dwellers.  Scarves that could be draped around the face protected both sexes from sunburn and sand storms.  But even in modern times and in urban settings, many Muslims continue to wear scarves for headdresses.  Women may wear a niqab (Arabic for veil) to cover their face as part of their hijab (Arabic for curtain or cover), or modest clothing that covers everything but a woman's hands and face when she is out in public.    Muslim men often wear a keffiyeh or a square cotton scarf, usually in a checked or plaid pattern.  The black and white keffiyeh is a symbol of the Palestinian political movement, and was made famous by Palestinian politician Yasser Arafat.  Muslim women also may wear scarves not as veils, but as decorative items or as dance accessories.  The women's decorative scarves often have flowers or other forms from nature woven into them, but the men's rarely have images, but instead favor geometric patterns.

So as one of our hands-on projects for Islam, we gave the students squares of white cotton and allowed them to decorate them as they chose (but reviewing the information above about typical Arabic scarf customs).  Along with permanent markers they could use to draw on the white cloth, we gave them duct tape that they could use for decoration, to provide edging for the scarves, or to stick on yarn for fringe (which is particularly prevalent in the male Arabic scarves).  As always, while all the students start with the same blank canvas, they take their art in totally different and beautiful ways.

The boys in the class pretty much stuck with lines, ranging from the more conventional to the ... less conventional:

The girls had more curves and other images in their scarves:

It was gratifying to see that some of them remembered our earlier lesson about the use of tessellated shapes in Islamic art, and incorporated that into their scarf patterns.

This was an inexpensive project that the students enjoyed; our class, at least, almost always enjoy the chance to be creative.  We also find that we get some of best discussions with this age group when their hands are occupied with something else, and they can talk without everyone looking at them, which makes some of them nervous when discussing more sensitive topics.  Since the topic of dress and appearance, particularly women wearing clothes to hide their attractiveness to men, can be a bit sensitive, this is a good technique for fostering discussion without making young adolescents feel too uncomfortable.

Lesson Plan: Islamic Prayer Rug

As I stated in an earlier blog post, one of the most interesting and central aspects of understanding Islam is their dedication to and many ritual practices around prayer.  One aspect of their prayer routine is that each person prays on his or her own prayer rug, which they use for both practical (hygiene) and spiritual purposes.  Therefore, one of the projects we have done during our Islamic studies is for the students to make their own versions of mock prayer rugs.

We began, however, with a discussion of Muslim art and decorative techniques.  Islamic buildings are not decorated with images of people or animals, which Muslims believe would encourage people to focus their worship on "false idols," rather than on Allah or God.  Instead, they fill their spaces with abstract shapes or items taken from nature, particular flowers or plants and stars.  In particularly, they rely heavily on decoration through tessellations, or repeated patterns of shapes that interlock and fill the space without any overlaps or gaps.  (M.C. Escher is a modern Western artist who uses or plays with tessellations a lot in his work.)  Muslim tessellations are particularly renowned for using stars and circles as the basis for their tessellations.

Therefore, we began this lesson talking about tessellations and learning to fold and cut out symmetrical stars, such as a six-point star and an eight-point star.  We played with some of those patterns first, and talked about how we could fill a prayer rug with those (although we probably wouldn't be able to do that in class, given our limited time).

To make our rugs, I gave each student a long (around 5 foot) piece of brown butcher paper from a big, 2-foot wide roll that we have.  Then they decorated their "rugs" with cut out stars and/or illustrations using markers.  Each one was an unique as the person creating it!  Our major issue was finding enough room for everyone to work on such big projects in our small room, giving us a great opportunity to work on our cooperation skills!

Here are some samples of the students' work:

The students enjoyed this activity, and it gave them a powerful reminder of Islam to take home.