Learn about the artwork that is created and kept close to the artist’s heart, and other artwork is made to be shared! Dig into some DIY book-making, participate in a secret community art project, and learn how artists and musicians build unity through Afro-Caribbean dance styles on a trip to Dogtown Dance Theatre — all on this episode of The Creative Corner.The Creative Corner is a weekly TV show for elementary through high school students and adults. Each episode explores new topics through the lens of the visual and performing arts, with fun at-home activities that align with Virginia's Standards of Learning, and special interviews with guests from around the globe. Developed for 4th grade through adults.

This unit is intended to address the VA Standards of Learning for World History II Standards 6 and 7.  Students are required to explore the similarities and differences between the various Asian land empires and African societies of the 1500s-1800s, with a particular focus on geographic, political, cultural, and economic interactions with each other and the rest of the world. Through the unit, students practice information literacy skills as they research and become experts in one Asian or African empire, work with a group to develop a virtual museum exhibit on it, and explore the virtual museum exhibits created by the other groups to learn about all of the empires and synthesize the unit content.  The unit, which is separated into 6 modules,  was designed for use in a virtual learning environment with both synchronous and asynchronous components.  It could easily be converted to a fully face-to-face unit, but it would be challenging to convert it to a fully asynchronous online unit because of the group work activities involved. 

By studying paintings from the Cave of Lascaux (France) and the Blombos Cave (South Africa), students will discover that pictures can be a way of communicating beliefs and ideas and can give us clues today about what life was like long ago.

This lesson provides a Common Core application for high school students for Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. Students will undertake close reading of passages in Things Fall Apart to evaluate the impact of Achebe's literary techniques, the cultural significance of the work, and how this international text serves as a lens to discover the experiences of others.

Students learn the linguistic strategies Achebe uses to convey the Igbo and British missionary cultures presented in the novel and how the text combines European linguistic and literary forms with African oral traditions.

Map of Africa coded by the number of underweight children per square kilometer. It is thus a measure of the absolute density of hungry individuals, a combination of hunger and population density.

What does leadership look like? Explore VMFA’s African Art collection to see how different cultures define and visualize the qualities of a leader. This resource brings together selected works from VMFA’s collections that relate to the theme of Leadership in African Art. Suggested inquiry-based activities are paired with each object and can be used in the galleries or classroom to promote discovery, critical thinking, and authentic engagement with art.

After more than 30 years in prison and an historic election that for the first time in the nation's history included all citizens regardless of race, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela became President of the Republic of South Africa on May 10, 1994. This Teacher's Guide includes resources for teaching about the brutality of apartheid, the resilience of the nation's people, the leadership of Nelson Mandela, and primary source materials that will inform discussion about the country's emergence in the world.

Working in groups, students look at three different villages in various parts of Africa and design economically viable engineering solutions to answer the energy needs of the off-the-grid small towns, given limited budgets. Each village has different nearby resources, both renewable and nonrenewable. Student teams conduct research, make calculations, consider the options and create plans, which they present to the class. Through their investigations and planning of custom solutions for each locale, they experience the real-world engineering research and analysis steps of the engineering design process.

Learn about the connections between the arts and the Earth. Make art at home using natural and recycled materials, travel the world to see some of the planet’s oldest paintings (in caves!), and check out an Earth-friendly music video featuring primary school students in Mamelodi Township, South Africa.

Trans-regional exchange through routes such as the Silk Road across Asia to the Mediterranean basin, maritime routes across the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and Trans-Saharan routes across North Africa allowed groups of people to exchange goods, knowledge, and ideas. Conflict and cooperation, economic pressures and political alliances, as well as conquest, migration, and trade have all resulted in rich cultural interchange. Use this resource set to explore how art can illustrate various ways in which technologies, forms, images, symbols, beliefs and concepts are adopted, adapted, and/or reinterpreted by communities across the globe until 1500.

Ten works of art from Virginia Museum of Fine Arts are presented with contextual information. Suggested inquiry-based activities paired with each object can be used in the galleries or classroom to promote discovery, critical thinking, and authentic engagement with art.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Geographic information systems (GIS) are important technology that allows rapid study and use of spatial information. GIS have become increasingly prevalent in industry and the consumer/internet world in the last 20 years. Historically, the basis of GIS was in mapping, and so it is important to understand the basis of maps and how to use them as well as why they are different from GIS. In this lesson, students learn the value of maps, how to use maps, and the basic components of a GIS. They are also introduced to numerous GIS applications.

Artists throughout time have come to their work with stories to tell, concepts to explore, and puzzles to work out. By looking at works of art with a curious and investigative eye, students may connect with these artistic ideas while exercising creative and critical thinking skills. This resource pairs objects from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection with simple engagement activities to help students thoughtfully consider and unpack the big ideas each artwork presents.