Make up assignment for April 13th- Bower's Museum

On Sunday, June 6th I went to the Bower’s museum to make up for missing a class on China during the beginning of our program. I had seen that the Bower’s museum had an exhibit on the Silk Road, and since that is a subject that I teach, I wanted to check it out. I waited until the very end because the first Sunday of every month is free and I wanted to take advantage of that.
The Silk Road exhibit was very interesting. There were tons of different artifacts ranging from clothing, tools, sculptures, and the most interesting of all to me, two mummies. It was amazing how detailed all the clothing was. Characters were woven into some of the fabrics. These characters said things like “may you have many sons” or “may you have many generations of decedents”. I liked this because it really reinforced the importance of family and the importance of ancestors that I stress with my students while I am teaching. I was also interested in the mummies that were on display because they were nothing like the stereotypical mummy I had in my mind. The mummies here had died in the winter and the water inside of them dried out while they froze. When they thawed in the spring, there wasn’t any water to rot the body so the bodies remained white and sleep-like instead of the black skin you usually see.
From a teacher point of view, I thought the museum did a very good job giving people a broad view of the Silk Road. There were a lot of signs with information and a very large timeline showing you various things about the Silk Road. If I were taking my class there I would create some sort of “scavenger” hunt for them. I would basically give them cloze-style notes (so I would have gone previously, found what I thought was the most important/interesting, and taken notes on it so I could create the cloze notes) so they would be forced to actually read the information and not just go through the exhibit quickly looking at the artifacts.
This was a special exhibit that leaves June 25th, but the Bower’s museum also has other exhibits that relate to this class. I spent some time looking through the room of ancient Chinese arts. There were tons of bronze, jade, and ivory artifacts. This room would be great for a history class or an art class because you could look at these artifacts from both view points. I would recommend going to the Bower’s museum with your class or on your own. But if you are going on your own, then I recommend going on the first Sunday of the month because then it is free!