Lesson Plan: "From Bloomers to Balance Beams: Girls' and Women's Athletic Wear Throughout History" (Grades 9-12, College)
Published and Created by:
Social Studies
+2 Age Levels Post-Secondary, High School (16 to 18 years old)
Learning about girls' and women's athletic wear throughout history gives students a unique opportunity to examine different era's cultural expectations surrounding exercise, as well as reflect on the reasons behind athletic wear's construction. "From Bloomers to Balance Beams" focuses on two garments — a mid-nineteenth century gymnasium suit and a gymnastics leotard from the 1996 Summer Olympics. Both are found in the exhibit "Girlhood (It's Complicated)."
This Learning Lab includes:
- C3 Standards for grades 9-12…
Lesson Plan: "From Bloomers to Balance Beams: Girls' and Women's Athletic Wear Throughout History" (Grades 9-12, College)
- Published and Created by:
- National Museum of American History
- Date Published
- August 05, 2021
- Last Modified
- February 16, 2024
- Description
-
Learning about girls' and women's athletic wear throughout history gives students a unique opportunity to examine different era's cultural expectations surrounding exercise, as well as reflect on the reasons behind athletic wear's construction. "From Bloomers to Balance Beams" focuses on two garments — a mid-nineteenth century gymnasium suit and a gymnastics leotard from the 1996 Summer Olympics. Both are found in the exhibit "Girlhood (It's Complicated)."
This Learning Lab includes:
- C3 Standards for grades 9-12
- Two objectives
- List of suggested materials
- Primary and secondary sources
- Guiding questions for class discussion
- Four ideas for assessment
Start by clicking on the first tile in the upper left-hand corner. Then move through the playlist by clicking on the ">" symbol at the bottom of the page. There are 33 tiles in this collection.
If you are new to Learning Lab, visit https://learninglab.si.edu/help/getting-started to learn how to get started.
Keywords: female, women, girls, girlhood, gender, clothes, clothing, fashion, Olympics, sports, gymnastics, gym, leotard, bloomers, gym uniform, 19th century, nineteenth century, 1996 Summer Games, Dominique Dawes
Welcome to the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Here you can discover more than a million resources, create personal collections and educational experiences, and share your work.
Find out more about the Learning Lab
It looks like this is your first visit to a collection page. Before you dig in you can watch a video or take a quick tour to get to know some nifty features.
