It’s safe to say that with President Barack Obama in office, February 2009 will go down as a truly historic Black History Month. And if you’re an educator or a parent, the inauguration comes as a blessing in disguise because your children can take a special interest in what you try to teach them at this time of year. One way to make an impression with your lessons is to get interactive through fun printable games, activities and puzzles. Here are some links to free resources you can print out and pass out during class or at home:
The Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel offers printable coloring book pages of famous African-Americans for your artistically-inclined students. The webpage does have some interesting choices and omissions – for example, noted drug abusers and has-beens like Bobby Brown, Barry Bonds and Darryl Strawberry get included, while Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington are nowhere to be found. Also, a lot of the images simply don’t look like the people they depict. Regardless, coloring is almost always a fun activity, and you can still pick and choose the pages you print and pass out.
The Teacher’s Corner has a custom word search puzzle creator where you can enter in the words you want your students to find, as well as number of rows and columns, fonts, colors, images, and a number of other attributes. Once you generate your puzzle, students can do it on the computer if you’re in a lab, or you can print out multiple copies and have them do it the old-fashioned way. It looks like a pretty useful application, especially for teachers looking to integrate an activity into an existing lesson plan. If you want an assortment of pre-made activities, About.com offers a list of links to printable and online word searches, crossword puzzles, and games based on black history.
Hopefully these resources provide an engaging spark for further research and discussion. You can also view videos, timelines, profiles of prominent African-Americans, and other educational multimedia at History.com/minisites/blackhistory.
(Photo via Morguefile)
