Hannah Hummel

Date: June 3, 2021

The Assyrian Cultural Foundation currently offers eight virtual art classes to children between the ages of 7 to 16. Half of them are taught by Hannah Hummel, and the other half by Noora Badeen. Today we are taking a look into Hannah Hummel.
 
Hannah Hummel was born in Indiana, and has loved art ever since she was a child. Eventually, she decided to pursue a career in it, so she attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where she graduated with honors. Although her training was in classical oil painting, she also enjoys working on collages and printmaking. One topic that Hummel tries to shine a light on through her artwork is female empowerment. Currently, Hummel not only works as an artist and teacher, but she also works on fabrication jobs, takes commissions, and sells some of her work locally.
 
Both Hummel and Badeen love teaching art. They believe that art helps expand children’s minds, helps them to better understand the world, and helps them with their problem-solving abilities.
If you are interested in enrolling your child in one of our art classes, feel free to email Stella at:
Stella.sweiss@acf-us.org
224-935-2366

Easy Kids Activity: Understanding Heritage

Date: November 1, 2016

Explaining something as abstract as heritage to a young child can be a challenge. They may have some sense of their own culture, but often times they are balancing more than one. By helping your child understand and respect similarities and differences you will also help your child to understand who he is in the context of your race, ethnic group, culture, religion, language and familial history. In so doing, you will provide your child with personally meaningful information and also introduce concepts from anthropology, history, religion, and geography.

Here’s a very simple and quick activity designed to help you initiate this conversation with your children (that also works with their attention spans!):

MATERIALS NEEDED:

  • Photos of various items/traditions that represent Assyrian heritage (see our photos below for ideas)
  • Photos of various items/traditions
  • Optional (see #5 below): scissors, glue, poster board

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Shuffle photos of Assyrian and non-Assyrian heritage. Place them into a face-down pile.
  2. Before starting, ask the children to define the world culture. They may have some ideas. Here is the simplest definition for a child: Culture is the way people live. Observable aspects of culture include language, clothing, celebrations, art, and food.
  3. Have children alternate picking up a photo from the pile. They should be asked to identify what’s pictured in the photo, and then decide if it’s an example of Assyrian heritage. The photos should then be divided into two piles (Assyrian and non-Assyrian heritage). We ran this activity in a large group setting. Each child was given a photo and told to keep it face-down until it was their turn. When prompted, they showed their image to the group and identified the object—often prompting laughter (i.e. a photo of sushi got the loudest laughs)—and together the group decided whether it was representative of Assyrian heritage. If the answer was yes, the child then added the photo to our board. 
  4. Once you’ve identified all the examples of Assyrian heritage, allow the activity to lead into a discussion. Some sample questions: Which of these items are things we do/use everyday? Which of these traditions are your favorite?
  5. Optional: Encourage children to create a collage using the photos. 

TIPS:

  • Looking to go paperless or save ink? Consider using an iPad to display the photos. Create a photo album with the images (be sure they’re mixed). In this case, consider making a chart where children are encouraged to write down items that are part of Assyrian heritage. (In a large group setting, try a PowerPoint presentation).
  • Another alternative is to create and print a worksheet with these photos and ask children to circle those that can be categorized as Assyrian heritage.

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