Seventh Graders Share Asia and Africa through Silk Road Market and Shadow Puppet Show

Students wrapped up their year of learning about the geography of Asia and Africa through the creation of a Silk Road market with 11 stalls and the sharing of 8 shadow puppet stories.
Students created puppets with which to tell stories from Asia and Africa. The stories were performed for 6th graders, parents, and community members.
Being a Silk Road market, students had hand-crafted artifacts to trade with their guests.  Guests brought canned goods to trade.  Artifacts and services included rice balls, Matoke (east African stew), chai tea packets, Adinkra stamped folders, trade bead bracelets, Japanese calligraphy boxes, henna, origami, joomchi earrings, batik fabric squares, and hummus and carrots.  The event became a service learning project for the 7th graders-- we collected over 1,250 pounds of canned goods for the North Kingstown Food Pantry.
The Silk Road market was opened with drumming from Mr. Issa Coulibaly and the shadow puppet stories were punctuated with Taiko drumming from Paton sensei.