With Black History Month on the horizon, you may be scrambling to find related games and activities to engage in with your children. If so, you may want to run down my list of ideas. Each one is something that I have utilized in the past with my kids. In my experience, the ideas are suitable for use with preschool through elementary school-age children. Here they are:
Need a themed activity to use as part of a music lesson plan? Why not introduce the children to famous black musicians? For example, you could play jazz or blues music and read books about Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and B.B. King. Great books to consider utilizing are Karen Ehrhardt’s “This Jazz Man” and Wynton Marsalis’ book “Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits.” Ehrhardt’s book is good for preschool through first grade students, whereas Marsalis’ book is better suited for older children.
Other ways to interject black history into music lessons include having the kids create musical instruments that were used by early African Americans. Examples of instruments include shekeres and djembe drums. You can find instructions for making each one posted on the Education website. Once the instruments are made, the kids could use them to create songs or march in a parade.
You could also teach them about slave songs or Jeli. As far as the slave songs go, you can find information about them on Owen Sound’s Black History website. Information about Jeli is available on the Djembefola website. After teaching the children about the songs, you could ask them to create their own lyrics using similar formats.
Dance Project
While we are on the subject of music, you may also want to incorporate information about forms of African American dance into your itinerary. For instance, you could talk to the children about famous tap dancers like Bill Robinson, Charles Cole, John Bubbles, Jeni LeGon, and Peg Leg Bates. There is biographical information and photos of each one posted on the American Tap Dance Foundation’s website. You could also teach them about mande or swing dancing and have them give a few dance steps a try.
Science and Technology Project
Another option would be to introduce the kids to African American pioneers in science and technology. For example, you could teach the children about George Washington Carver and then have them make homemade peanut butter or African pea soup. Once the lesson is over, you could serve them the soup or peanut butter as part of a snack. Homemade peanut butter recipes are posted on the Kids Health website. An African peanut soup recipe, on the other hand, is posted on the Education website.
Of course, you could also opt to highlight Garrett Morgan. He invented the traffic light. Thus, after the history lesson, you could engage the kids in a game of red light, green light. If you are unfamiliar with the game, you can find instructions posted on the Great Group Games website.
Should neither of those two options appeal to you, there is a list of African American inventors posted on the Nick Jr. website. The list also comes with facts and coloring sheets that could be paired with the assorted inventors. Additional worksheets and coloring pages may also be found on the Teacher Vision website. Each sheet highlights a particular inventor or invention.
Arts and Crafts
Would you rather have the kids engage in arts and crafts related activities? If so, I’d suggest introducing them to senufo painting, mask making, and sculpture. To help you in such endeavors, there are tips for creating senufo paintings posted on the Teacher Vision website. You can also find instructions for making African masks posted on the Scissor Crafts for Children website and homemade play dough recipes on the Family Education website.
Junior Reporters Project
Lastly, you may want to consider asking the children to interview an African American whom they admire and then report on their findings. Should that person be a family member, you could also have the kids trace their family’s roots. You can find resources to help them with such an activity posted on the Mid-Continent Public Library’s website. Resources on the site include blank generation charts, coloring sheets, and family tree outlines.
If the person whom the child admires is a famous person, you could always have them write a report or draw a picture of that individual. Afterward, you could display those items or send them to the person that the child wrote about.
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