Create
Creating your own collections and customizing resources to fit your needs makes the Learning Lab a one-of-a-kind resource for efficiency and creativity. Free your imagination – you can create collections using the Smithsonian's vast resources, add your own resources or those from other sources, annotate the objects you collect, develop your own quizzes and more. Create complete lessons or artistic collections, and build upon each for more personal and memorable learning.
Suggested Resources
Cultural Imagery and Stereotypes: The American Experience in the Classroom
This collection focuses on two works that deal with the issues of nationality, identity and the assimilation of cultures. Mel Casas's pun-laced Humanscape 62 combines elements familiar to many Americans: brownie desserts and a young Girl Scout (a Brownie), with traditional Mexican imagery. This pop art style-blend illustrates the Chicano experience to American culture and creates a push and pull narrative about Latino identity. Similarly, Roger Shimomura, an American-born artist of Japanese descent, contemplates repressed emotions from the time he and his family spent in World War II-era Japanese internment camps, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
#APA2018
The Subway
My Smithsonian Closet
Kate Harris 
Horn Players
This is introductory information for Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Horn Players" from 1983.
This collection was created in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery's 2017 Learning to Look Summer Teacher Institute.
TAGS: #NPGteach, portrait, learning to look, National Portrait Gallery, jazz, Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Basquiat, AP Art History
Stacey Horman 
Mummy Science - Natural and Cultural Preserved Remains
This Smithsonian Science How learning collection, from Q?rius at the National Museum of Natural History, is part of a distance learning program at http://qrius.si.edu/explore-science/webcast This collection focuses on the science of mummies. Targeted at middle schoolers, the collection invites students into an authentic understanding of how mummies form, both naturally and culturally. Physical and forensic anthropologist Dr. David Hunt is featured as an expert explainer. The collection includes an interactive webcast video with discussion questions, cross-cutting activities, an independent project, and other resources for teachers and students.
This collection was created to support the 2016 CCSSO Teachers of the Year Day at the Smithsonian.
Key Terms: physical anthropology, archaeology, skeletal remains, mummification, burial practices, decomposition, culture
Key Concepts:
Skeletal analysis for age, sex, ancestry, and health
Cultural burial practices over time
Chemical process of mummification
Scientific benefits of studying mummies
Technology used by physical anthropologists
Angles in Motion
Created for the National Portrait Gallery Learning to Look Summer Institute, 2016 #NPGteach
Rachel Slezak Emergence of Civilization in China: Oracle Bones
In this student activity, students learn about life in early Chinese urban society by analyzing oracle bone divinations. These divinations, consisting of characters inscribed on turtle shells and animal bones over 3,000 years ago, are among the earliest systematic Chinese written language extant today. Students will answer object analysis questions, complete an activity using translations of divinations, and compare early Chinese urban society to Bronze Age societies in other parts of the world. This set includes multiple objects from the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
Created by Elizabeth Eder and Keith Wilson at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in collaboration with Tess Porter, Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access.
Tags: archaeology; ancestor worship; shang dynasty; diviner; early writing; early civilization; ritual; artifact; archaeological remains; artifact analysis
#historicalthinking
Civil War Diary: Homefront Perspectives
Nicole Gilbertson 
