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Harlem Renaissance Unit Study

January 16, 2018 by Selena Robinson 4 Comments

We’ve always been passionate about teaching our kids black history. There are so many wonderful stories, people, and events to share. And one of our very favorite periods to discuss is the Harlem Renaissance.

So this year, we wanted to develop a Harlem Renaissance unit study we could cover with the kids to help them learn even more about the people, movements, and ideas that sprang up in Harlem during the 1920s. I hope you and your kids love the books and activities about the Harlem Renaissance below too!

Don’t forget to check out our printable jazz unit study “We Got Jazz” to learn about the pioneers of jazz and bebop!

Take the children back in time to the glory days of Harlem with this Harlem Renaissance unit study for kids!

Harlem Renaissance Unit Study

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Harlem Renaissance Notebooking Pages

I wanted to have some printables that the kids could use to write down what they learn about the Harlem Renaissance, so I created these Jazz Journaling notebooking pages! Click the image or the link below to download yours free!

Jazz Notebooking Pages

>>> Jazz Journaling Printable Notebooking Pages <<<

What Was the Harlem Renaissance?

Watch the video below to get an overview of the Harlem Renaissance and then let your kids answer the following questions.

1. What was the Harlem Renaissance? (Answer: A cultural and intellectual movement that occurred in Harlem, New York during the 1920s)

2. How did Harlem come to be a major African-American cultural center? (Answer: During the Great Migration, many African-Americans moved up north and settled in Harlem.)

3. What branches of thought and entertainment were included in the Harlem Renaissance? (Answer: Music, poetry, writing, art, and philosophy)

4. How did African-American fashion change during the Harlem Renaissance? (Answer: Men started to wear zoot suits, women wore low-slung dresses. Both men and women wore hats. Leopard-print became a popular trend, because of its connection to ancient African culture.)

5. How did the Harlem Renaissance affect the musical culture of the United States? (Answer: African-American art and music became popular with white audiences. White musicians began incorporating African-American musical rhythms and styles into their music.)

6. How did the Harlem Renaissance change the perception of African-Americans in the United States? (Answer: Prior to the 1920s, black people were often thought of as uneducated farmers. During the Renaissance, people came to see that black people were sophisticated, intelligent, and accomplished.)

Among the prominent writers of the movement was Langston Hughes (one of my personal writing heroes). This video is a good introduction to his work.

Books About the Harlem Renaissance:

These Harlem Renaissance books for kids are wonderful for learning about this period in American history!

Share these books about the Harlem Renaissance to bring this historical period to life!

1. The Harlem Renaissance: An Interactive History Adventure

2. The Great Migration: An American Story

3. Louis Armstrong: Jazz Legend

4. The Harlem Renaissance (We The People)

5. Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of The Harlem Renaissance

6. Black Stars of the Harlem Renaissance

7. Sugar Hill: Harlem’s Historic Neighborhood

8. Schomburg: The Man Who Built A Library

9. Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance

10. Take A Picture of Me, James VanDerZee!

Beautiful Harlem Renaissance Books for Kids

11. Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes

12. Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story

13. Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills

14. One Last Word: Wisdom From the Harlem Renaissance

15. Harlem Renaissance Party

16. A Song for Harlem (Scraps of Time)

17. W.E.B. DuBois (Great African-Americans)

18. Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra

19. Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes

20. The Harlem Renaissance: Profiles in Creativity

Be sure to let the kids dress up in period clothing to match the style of the Harlem Renaissance! We hit up a local thrift store to find an outfit for our oldest daughter.

Dressing Up for a Harlem Renaissance Unit

Many of the African-American jazz musicians who became famous during the 20th century either got their start during the Renaissance or grew up during that time and developed styles based on the modern jazz that came out of the movement.

Check out our unit study We Got Jazz for over 130 pages of activities about some of these artists!

Jazz History Music Matching Activity

Stop by to check out these other learning ideas!

These beautiful African American story books for kids feature wonderful characters for children to explore!

This jazz history unit is a perfect black history unit study for music class!

Studying the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

And see more ideas for teaching history at home on my Living History for Kids Pinterest board!

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We Got Jazz Printable Unit

Filed Under: Black History, History, Unit Studies Tagged With: african american history, black history, history

Must-Read Black History Books for Kids

January 10, 2017 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

In our family, black history is history. We teach it along with every other topic. We’ve covered African history, civil rights, and even jazz history with our children over the years. But we’ve also enjoyed sharing African-American storybooks that help them “see” themselves in stories.

As part of learning about history, we’ve read some wonderful black history books for kids over the years. Today I’m sharing some of the selections that I consider “must-read” books! If I missed any of your favorites, feel free to share your suggestions in the comments!

Learning about black history is such an important part of a child's education. Make it fun with these must-read black history books for kids!

Image c/o: Brainsil / depositphotos

Must-Read Black History Books for Kids

(Affiliate links provided here for convenience. For more, see our Disclosure Policy.)

1. 100 African-Americans Who Shaped American History by Chrisanne Beckner (If you only get one, make it this one.)

2. Rosa by Nikki Giovanni

3. When the Beat was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip-Hop by Laban Carrick Hill

4. My Name is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth by Ann Turner

5. Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America

6. Fly High: The Story of Bessie Coleman by Louise Borden

7. Firebird by Misty Copeland

8. Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream by Deloris Jordan

9. Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad

10. A Weed is a Flower: The Life of George Washington Carver by Aliki

11. Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold

12. Black Cowboys by Ryan P. Randolph

13. Fifty Cents and a Dream: Young Booker T. Washington by Jabari Asim

14. The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles (Check out our Ruby Bridges unit study!)

15. Alvin Ailey by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Beautiful Black History Books for Kids to Read - Look! We're Learning!

16. Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell

17. 28 Days: Moments in Black History That Changed the World by Charles R. Smith, Jr.

18. Fort Mose: And the Story of the Man Who Built the First Free Black Settlement in Colonial America by Glennette Tiley Turner

19. Molly, By Golly!: The Legend of Molly Williams, America’s First Female Firefighter

20. Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson (Don’t miss our Nelson Mandela unit!)

21. Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull

22. Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra by Andrea Davis Pinkney

23. Tommy Traveler in the World of Black History by Tom Feelings (This is a tough one to find, but it is so worth it.)

24. The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch by Chris Barton

25. What Color is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

26. Mister and Lady Day: Billie Holiday and the Dog Who Loved Her by Amy Novesky

27. Jump Back, Paul: The Life and Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar by Sally Derby

28. Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X by Ilyasah Shabazz

29. Rhythm Ride: A Road Trip Through the Motown Sound by Andrea Davis Pinkney

30. Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson by Barry Denenberg

31. When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Munoz Ryan

32. Nothing But Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson by Sue Stauffacher

33. Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Carole Boston Weatherford

34. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson

Must-Read Black History Books for Kids - Look! We're Learning!

Check out these other black history posts!

Studying the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

31 African American Story Books for Kids - Look! We're Learning!

Ruby Bridges Unit Study

Plus, grab our ebook “We Got Jazz” for 120 pages of unit studies and activities about jazz greats, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and more!

We Got Jazz eBook - Look! We're Learning!

Follow my Living History for Kids board on Pinterest for more history teaching ideas!

This post is part of the “Must-Read Books” linkup from iHomeschool Network! Stop by to read more awesome book lists from my fellow bloggers!

Must-Read Books linkup

Filed Under: Black History, Book Lists, History Tagged With: black history, black history books, black history books for kids, book lists, books, books about black history for kids, books for kids, history, history books, history books for kids, homeschool history, kids books about black history, must-read black history books for kids, reading

Studying the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

August 25, 2016 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

My sixth grader has been showing more of an interest in black history lately, which is awesome because I love teaching it! We’re creeping up on the ’20s again, so I thought we’d go back and look at the 1920s during this homeschool year.

The ’20s were pretty great for black history. There were some horrible things happening, due to increased racial tension, but the Harlem Renaissance also took place that decade and that was a milestone era for African-American art.

So I was excited to try the book The 1920s in America: A Decade of Tensions from Kendall Hunt Publishing! It has units on both the racial tension of the 1920s and the Harlem Renaissance! Read on to see how we used this textbook to cover this fascinating period in black history!

Learning about the Harlem Renaissance

For more black history learning ideas, don’t miss our Ruby Bridges unit study and our list of 31 African-American storybooks for kids, including several history picture books!

Disclosure: I received this product in exchange for this post and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.

Studying the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

Covering The Racial Tension of the 1920s with Kendall Hunt Publishing

Kendall Hunt is a curriculum company that offers textbooks and unit studies for grades PreK through 12th. There are a TON of resources to look through. Don’t believe me? Stop by and drool over the curriculum catalog. 🙂

The textbook The 1920s in America: A Decade of Tensions, which is part of the William & Mary Center for Gifted Education Social Studies program, is designed for public school education, but I found it to be an easy text to adapt to a homeschool unit.

Kendall Hunt The 1920s in America Textbook

One of the things I love about the textbook is that it contains a unit about the existing racial tension of the decade before embarking on a discussion about the Harlem Renaissance. We can only appreciate the importance of those artistic achievements if we understand what life was like for many black Americans at the time.

So we began as the unit does: with a look at the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.

Since we live in the Deep South, we see reminders of the KKK’s influence every now and then. (In fact, they were recruiting in a local neighborhood recently.) While I don’t want to frighten my daughter, I do want her to understand the very real issues that confronted black Americans in the past and still exist today.

Using YouTube to Study the 1920s

After we watched the video about the KKK, we talked a bit about life in the post-reconstruction South for black people. It was pretty grim. Poverty was rampant, jobs were scarce, and racism was everywhere.

As the textbook instructed, we took a look at the black nationalism movement next to discover the rationale for returning to Africa. And, of course, you can’t talk about black nationalism without discussing Marcus Garvey. After we watched a short video about Garvey, it was time to complete the point of view exercise in the textbook. (There are also two essays in the textbook: one written by a leader of the KKK and another written by a proponent of black nationalism.)

POV Exercise about the 1920s

As we got a feel for the everyday life of the average black American in the 1920s, we were ready to explore the beauty of the Harlem Renaissance and why it was so important to African-American society.

Exploring the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

We began by watching a short video about the Harlem Renaissance.

Studying the Harlem Renaissance with Video

I asked my daughter to summarize why seeing the artistic accomplishments of the era would be so impressive to black Americans. Here’s what she wrote:

“The Harlem Renaissance gave the black folks a chance to make something that they would later be proud of. The black people who saw the art by other black people felt a ray of hope.”

Exactly.

Reading Langston Hughes Poetry

To continue the unit, we read the poem I, Too by Langston Hughes, which is quoted in its entirety in the textbook.

Off-topic a bit here, but Langston Hughes is one of my very favorite writers ever in history. Ever.

Organizing Feelings about African American Poetry

After we read the poem a few times, we used the included Literature Web printout and the questions in the unit to help examine our feelings about the work.

Organizing Responses to Literature

I loved this exercise, by the way. It’s such a nice method for helping kids to think about the way a poem makes them feel and then analyze those emotions. It’s also a good introduction to recognizing symbolism, something that’s crucial to our understanding of literature.

Completing a Literature Web about African American Poetry

As she filled in the Literature Web, my daughter started to find deeper meaning in the poem than she originally picked up. It’s amazing that a written work which consists of about 20 lines can say so much.

Of course, I couldn’t let a lesson about the Harlem Renaissance go by without dressing her up – just a little.

Dressing Up for a Harlem Renaissance Unit

Women were extra sharp in those days. So we stopped by Goodwill and picked up a hat with feathers and a long necklace, then paired them with a dress she already had.

Simple DIY Harlem Renaissance Costume

Fabulous!

This was a wonderful history lesson – one of my favorites ever in our homeschool. And I really appreciated how the textbook The 1920s in America: A Decade of Tensions helped me organize the lesson and structure it so that it would make the most impact on my daughter’s understanding of American history.

Want to learn more about Kendall Hunt Publishing? Follow the company on Facebook and Twitter for news about products and promotions!

Get more ideas for teaching history to your kids on my Living History board on Pinterest!


Filed Under: Black History, History Tagged With: african american history, american history, black history, black history unit, black history unit studies, harlem renaissance, harlem renaissance unit, history

Homeschool Unit Studies: Ruby Bridges Unit Study

February 25, 2016 by Selena Robinson 3 Comments

In our family, we don’t celebrate Black History Month. After all, we’re not just black in February. 🙂 Since black history is important, we talk about it year-round. But I wanted to share one of our recent homeschool unit studies with you all now, while more people are thinking about black history.

The book The Story of Ruby Bridges was on our first grade reading list for this year, so when we read the book we made it into a full Ruby Bridges Unit Study! Read on to see the resources we used and the lessons we learned!

Ruby Bridges Unit Study

Ruby Bridges Unit Study

We began our unit by reading this book: The Story of Ruby Bridges. After reading it, we looked up more about Ruby’s life.

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles
It’s amazing to think that this happened only about 50 years ago – long after slavery had ended. It just says something about how deeply ingrained certain ways of thinking can become.

US Marshals with Young Ruby Bridges on School Steps

I was really moved to see pictures of this little six-year-old girl walking through protesters into an empty school. The same people who took their children out of the school dedicated themselves to standing outside of it for weeks on end, shouting racial slurs at a child.

In fact, the president had to call in the federal marshals to keep Ruby safe from the mobs outside because the local and state police refused to help. You can see one of them in the picture above standing inside the building and smiling. Unbelievable.

We examined this excellent resource at Scholastic featuring a slideshow about segregation during the 1950s and 1960s. Since that was a generation ago, it’s one thing for kids to hear about it, but another thing entirely to see it. My kids couldn’t get over the white and “colored” water fountains.

This video is from the PBS series “The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross”. Seeing the footage of people screaming at Ruby really affected the kids. Honestly, it affected me too. I knew about Ruby’s story as a child, but seeing it now as a parent had a completely different effect on me.

I have to take my hat off to Ruby’s parents, because there’s no way I could send my child into an environment like that. But, as I told our kids, someone had to be first. And because Ruby went through that then, my kids didn’t have to deal with those kinds of pressures when they went to school.

I asked the kids to contrast Ruby’s first day of school with their first day of public school last year and write down the differences. Here’s what they wrote:

Six-year-old Roo: “When Ruby went to school, people were yelling at her. But when I went to school, nobody was yelling at me.”

Seven-year-old Pooh: “When Ruby was at school, people hated her. When I went to school, everyone was kind. That must have been hard, scary for her but she did it!”

Ruby Bridges and Obama

A while back, Ruby was invited to the White House where she and President Obama looked at the 1964 Norman Rockwell painting she inspired. In 2011, the painting was displayed outside of the Oval Office for a time.

Ruby Bridges got the chance to reunite with one of the federal marshals who escorted her to school back in 2013. You might want to check out this article about it, but *fair warning* you might also want to have some tissues handy.

Ruby Bridges Unit Study for Kids

Links about Ruby Bridges:

We used these links to learn more about Ruby’s life and experience in school.

  • Ruby Bridges Interview with Henry Louis Gates
  • Ruby Bridges Biography for Kids
  • Ruby Bridges Biography

Books about Ruby Bridges:

Along with The Story of Ruby Bridges, there are some other great kids’ books about Ruby’s life.

  • Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story
  • Through My Eyes
  • Ruby Bridges (Rookie Biographies)

Filed Under: Black History, History Tagged With: black history, black history for kids, civil rights, history

Ancient Egypt History for Kids

October 15, 2013 by Selena Robinson 3 Comments

Studying African history has always been important in our family. Over the years, many schoolbooks have omitted or glossed over ancient African kingdoms and we wanted to make sure that our children learn the truth about these civilizations, no matter what.

To start, we focused on the Ancient Egyptian civilization, which is world-famous as a kingdom that prized mathematics, law, agriculture, and writing – among other things. But many school lessons have presented a view of Ancient Egypt that is at odds with what historians have discovered, including what the Egyptians looked like, what they accomplished, and who ruled the kingdom over the years.

So we put together our own lesson about Ancient Egypt history for kids! Read on to learn more about this fascinating and accomplished civilization that you can share with your children!

If you love this unit, be sure to check out our list of must-read black history books for kids!

Get started learning African history for kids with this unit about ancient Egypt history for kids!

Ancient Egyptian Architecture

Egypt is probably the best known ancient African kingdom. The main reason for this is that there are so many archaeological sites that testify to what life was like in Ancient Egypt.

We looked at some images of Egyptian ruins to get an idea of the extraordinary accomplishments made in architecture, design, and mathematics by Egyptians. We looked particularly at the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Abu Simbel temples.

The Great Pyramid, for example, took over 20 years to complete. Its design is so mathematically precise that historians still cannot understand how the Egyptians built it. They even doubt that the same structure could be reproduced today.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Sphinx

Image c/o: Fred Hsu

The Temples at Abu Simbel

Image c/o: Dennis Jarvis

The kids made some miniature models of the Great Pyramid of Khufu out of paper. We got this activity from the book History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations.

Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

To make the pyramids, we simply cut out the paper shapes and then colored them.

Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

Then we folded them on the lines and added glue to make them stand up.

Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

All finished!

Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

As you can tell, this craft was a pretty big hit.

Hatshepsut, the Female Pharaoh

We also learned about the first female Pharaoh, Hatshepsut. Tigger, in particular, was interested to find out about her. We picked up the book African Princess: The Amazing Lives of Africa’s Royal Women and read about her life and reign.

She was truly an incredible woman and ruler. In many art pieces and statues, she is portrayed as a man with a beard. At the time, a female Pharaoh was unheard of and scholars think that the succeeding Pharaohs decided to show her as a man to hide her existence. But a few statues of her exist that show her as a woman.

This one is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:

Image c/o: Keith Schengili-Roberts

Hatshepsut was so revered as a Pharaoh that she was buried at her own temple at Deir el-Bahari:

Image c/o: Olaf Tausch

What Did Ancient Egyptians Look Like?

One of the things that has long irritated me about the images of ancient Egyptians in popular culture is that they are often portrayed as being very fair-skinned. I’ve personally seen a lot of children’s history resources use cartoons that show Egyptians as Caucasian people dressed in Middle Eastern attire.

To counter this view, we looked at some examples of ancient Egyptian art that clearly shows ancient Egyptians as brown-skinned people:

Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

Image c/o: Angelfire.com/ky/southernrock
 
 Image c/o: StewartSynopsis.com

We also learned that Egyptians were very fond of jewelry and that both men and women wore it regularly. Women typically wore lots of eye makeup, as well as elaborate collars such as this:

Image c/o: woodsboy2011

 In fact, here’s a relief at the Hathor Temple showing the same kind of collar:

Image c/o: isawnyu

Where Was Ancient Egypt?

To give the kids a better idea of how the ancient kingdoms of Africa were situated, we decided to make a simple map of them. We purchased the Discover Africa notebooking set from Balancing Everything and used the blank Africa maps as the basis for our template. (It is a truly wonderful geography unit for all 54 countries on the African continent.)

We began by marking the area covered by Ancient Egypt and we’ll be filling in the map with the other kingdoms we feature.

Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!

If you’d like to check out the Discover Africa notebooking set, you can see it for yourself by visiting Balancing Everything or by clicking below:

Discover Africa Notebooking Set

Ancient Egypt History for Kids - Look! We're Learning!

Books and Resources about Ancient Egypt

Here are the books and resources we used for this lesson.

PBS: Wonders of the African World – This website is based on a PBS series from the 1990s written and narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Sections cover Egypt, Nubia, and Swahili.

Egypt (Enchantment of the World Series)
Daily Life in Ancient and Modern Cairo (Cities Through Time)
African Princess: The Amazing Lives of Africa’s Royal Women
African Beginnings
History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations (Grades 1-3)
The Usborne Book of Living Long Ago: Everyday Life Through the Ages
Exploring Ancient Egypt: Look! We're Learning!
Don’t miss these other history posts!

Ruby Bridges Unit Study

Learning about black history is such an important part of a child's education. Make it fun with these must-read black history books for kids!

Studying the Harlem Renaissance with Kendall Hunt Publishing

Be sure to check out the rest of our 10 Days of African History series!

10 Days of African History for Kids: Look! We're Learning!

This post is part of the Autumn 2013 Hopscotch from iHomeschool Network! Click below to visit the Hopscotch posts from all of our fellow bloggers!

iHN Autumn Hopscotch 2013

For more awesome history ideas, follow my Living History for Kids board on Pinterest!

Filed Under: 10 Days of African History for Kids, Black History, History Tagged With: african history, ancient black history for kids, ancient egypt, ancient egypt for kids, ancient egypt history, ancient egypt history for kids, ancient egyptian history, black history, black history for kids, black history unit, egyptian history, history, homeschool history

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