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.

Happy Bastille Day!

Happy Bastille Day!  Bastille Day is, of course, French National Day, observed every July 14th as the anniversary of the storming of the infamous French prison, the Bastille.  In line with our general philosophy of celebrating every holiday that we can, we had marked this day previously in years past.  However, since we actually studied the French Revolution this past year, it seemed appropriate to make an even bigger occasion of Bastille Day then usual.

Yesterday we invited some friends over to help prepare a French meal with us.  We started by munching on apples and a French baguette while we chopped up food for our main dish.

We then had meat fondue, cooking our steak, chicken, or sausage (consumed along with some fresh raw vegetables) in boiling broth rather than the more traditional, but less healthy or safe, boiling oil.

We concluded the meal with home made cream puffs--home made puff pastries filled with hand-whipped cream and blackberry curd homemade from berries our friends had picked themselves.

Delicious!  They were consumed almost immediately, of course....

Today I'm trying a less traditional dish.  I'm making what I am calling Lasagna Provencal--kind of a cross between traditional Lasagna and Ratatouille, accompanied by baguette once again.

If nothing else, you should at least mark the occasion by watching this video about the French Revolution from the History Teachers series that I've mentioned before:




Enjoy!

Book Review: Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan is the next on my personal list of potential Newbery award winners.  Whelan, who has written a number of historical fictions for the middle school age reader, returns to the country of the novel that won her a National Book Award for her tale of Homeless Bird.  But while that book follows the life of a traditional young native bride in India, Small Acts of Amazing Courage traces the story of a young woman among the so-called "British Raj"-- the British society that ruled India in the 19th and 20th century.

The protagonist, Rosalind, has lived a life of leisure and privilege in the British compound in colonial India, even during the years when her father has been off fighting World War I.  However, in this coming-of-age novel, the feisty lead character is coming to wonder about living a life of such abundance when so many native Indians live lives of such desperation.  The book is set in 1918, around the times of Gandhi's rise and the Indian Independence movement.  But when Rosalind attempts to follow her own conscience, she runs into major conflicts with the English mores, and especially with the expectations and political convictions of her own father.

I mostly like this book because of the wonderful job the author did of describing the life and times during a tumultuous period in a the fascinating land of India.  She introduces Gandhi (one of my personal heroes) and a simplified version of the drive for freedom from England by the Indian people.  Rosalind is a strong and moral character, but without becoming overdone or too one-dimensional.  Most of all, I like how she subtly demonstrated the concept that the subjugation of one people by another ends up trapping them both.  There are small acts of amazing courage by several different people on several different levels, making this an interesting story with a good message.

Free History Book for Teachers

The History Channel is running a nice give-away for teachers.  They are offering a FREE copy of the 412-page, companion book to their 12-part American history series, America:  The Story of US, to teachers.   While there is no cost for the book, which normally retails for $29.95, recipients must pay $3.95 for shipping (like I said, it's a 412 page book).


If you are eligible for this deal, you can receive your copy by calling 1-800-344-6336 during regular business hours.


The History Channel also has extensive teacher support materials available online, including teacher's guides, episode guides, and video clips.  Click here to visit the Story of US website.

Thar Be Pirates About!

This weekend we went to such a fabulous concert!  It was part of the North Carolina Symphony Summerfest Concert series, which I have blogged about previously.  The title of Saturday night's show was Pirates, and it comprised all sorts of nautical-related music.

At first, I was concerned it might be a bit too commercially-oriented, but that turned out not to be the case at all.  Yes, it did have music from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies--which, I have to admit, I was so wrong about and love although I ridiculed it prior to actually seeing the movies (that is generally true about the movies as well as the music in them).  So, yes, they are ridiculously popular and money-making movies, but that doesn't mean that Hans Zimmer's music wasn't great, because I think that it was.

But the show contained so much more than that.  It did have its show element, with songs from the movie Hook, the musical Peter Pan, and even the classic Captain Blood.  It had light operetta (The Pirates of Penzance) and Wagner's opera, The Flying Dutchman, along with some traditional sea chanties and nautical songs.  The NC Symphony did a wonderful job with all these works.

However, my son and I were particularly enthusiastic about two sets of modern compositions.  I was really struck by some songs done by a composer from Greensboro, NC, who had written a musical about North Carolina's most notorious pirate, Blackbeard.  Laurelyn Dossett got to sing two of her songs from that show, entitled Bloody Blackbeard, accompanied by the state's symphony, which I imagine is pretty much a life's ambition for a local composer.  They were great songs, and I hope they become more well known.

My son's favorite was a piece called The Last Voyage of the Currituck:  A Symphonic Odyssey, which was by Terry Mizesko, who is a member of the NC Symphony.  This six-part piece ran from the hussle-bussle of taking off, to the enthusiastic beginnings, later longing for those at home, and eventual bad end in the Bermuda Triangle, with dramatically different emotions conveyed by the talented musicians.  It was also a well-written work that I hope will gain wider renown.

But I give the NC Symphony a lot of credit for a really well-developed evening of music around this theme.  As I've stated before, I come from Washington DC, so I'm used to a high level of cultural arts in my arts, museums, theater, and musical performances.  And I don't really expect the North Carolina institutions to compete with what it is possible for, say, the Smithsonian Institution or the Kennedy Center for the Arts to do.  But I think North Carolina has been really smart about targeting the resources that it has.  So, for example, the NC Zoo has an African section and a North American section; it has restricted its scope, and does those two areas really well, rather than having a mediocre mish-mash of animals from all over the world.  Similarly, both the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the North Carolina Aquariums (all three of them) design their major exhibits around North Carolina environments (terrestrial or aquatic); again, this gives a logical focus to their museums, and they cover that narrower focus really well.

And so for the theme of Pirates, the Symphony found a way to focus the show on North Carolina talents and assets, including the always intriguing legends of Blackbeard.  The concert tied into the recent exhibit in the North Carolina Maritime Museum on Treasures from the Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard's flagship vessel that has recently been been recovered from the seabed along the North Carolina coast.

Plus, it was a lovely night, we were seeing the show with good friends, we had plenty to eat and drink, they had all kinds of pirate exhibits and activities to entertain the children, PLUS they had fireworks afterwards.  So what's not to love?

PS--Here is my son's blog post inspired by the concert.

History Teachers Meet Bollywood!

OK, so that title might be a bit of an exaggeration.

However, a few months ago a had a post about these wonderful history teachers who are posting free music videos on YouTube of history topics set to popular music (check out the link for more background and some of my favorites of their videos).

They have done a couple more since my post, but my favorite is a video about the Mahabharata, the epic Indian morality tales that includes the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred text for Hinduism.  It is done Indian style, with the video of the lead singer demonstrating her use of four arms.




It is great to seem them expanding from basic Western Civilization history.  We are doing Hinduism in the fall, so I'm definitely saving this for my coming classes.

Curriculum Resource: Museum Educator Bob Alderink

If you live in the Triangle area and aren't familiar with one of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences premier educators, Bob Alderink, then you are really missing out.  Bob Alderink is exactly the kind of person you want your child to be learning science from; he is passionate about his subject, knows all sorts of both deep and trivial knowledge on many different aspects of biology, and is an excellent presenter who couches his lessons with demonstrations, hands-on activities, age-appropriate pacing, and really great energy and humor.

For years, we have enjoyed Alderink's presentations at the NCMNS.  My son has watched the same show over multiple times (an unusual behavior for him) because of Alderink's energy and funny comments.  However, Alderink also offers a number of classes for homeschoolers outside of the Museum, and we were fortunate enough to attend a series of his wildlife classes this past year.  Just walking through the woods with Alderink is a treasure, because he can explain so many interesting facets of just about every plant you pass.

So I was so glad to hear that the North Carolina Science, Math, and Technology Center recently awarded its first ever award for Outstanding Informal Educator to Bob Alderink.  You can learn more about Alderink and his work in science education through this video on the SMT website.

Or, you can see some of Alderink's work here on a new project he is doing for the NCMNS:  a series of short videos entitled A Moment of Science:




I was so pleased to hear about Alderink's award--I don't know anyone who deserves recognition more than he does for the wonderful job he does on turning kids onto science.  If you don't know him, you should definitely go see one of his public educational presentations at the Museum.  And if you are a homeschooler and have an opportunity to attend some of his classes, jump on it!  You won't be disappointed.