This is a painting of Mumtaz Mahal.
The Taj Mahal was built to honor her.
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was married to Shah Jahan, a Moghul emperor whose lands covered most of India and several other countries as well. She accompanied him all over his empire while he was out campaigning and inspecting his lands. An Moghul Emperor could spend about a third of his reign away from his palace. It could take a year to travel from one side of the empire to the other. Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan traveled by horse, horse cart, elephant and carried in chairs by four to eight adults. All of their supplies had to be carried with them. They used lots of elephants as "pack animals". Travel with a huge group (ten thousand people and lots of animals) was not fast!
Shah Jahan
Mumtaz Mahal had fourteen children. Most of them were born away from their main palace, the Red Fort where they lived in Agra. Shah Jahan was devastated when Mumtaz Mahal died in June of 1631. The Taj Mahal was built to honor her.
Inspired by the pictures of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan that you have shown, grade 2 had a lengthy discussion. Students wondered deeply about the lives of Shah Jahan and his family. They pondered about the time period and saw how much of an impact the Taj Mahal had then and still does now.
ReplyDeleteIt is exciting to study history. You can learn so much by reading about the people who lived before and seeing the buildings, artifacts, objects and writing they left behind. Historians are constantly putting together the clues about people's lives to help them have a better picture of what life was like. We are lucky to have Shah Jahan's journals, memoirs, court documents and other artifacts from his life to help us understand what life was like for a Mughal Emperor and his Empress.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to sharing these photos with my class as well. Today we viewed some panoramic images of the Taj Mahal and were able to see both its location (next to the Yamuna River, landscaping/design of the grounds, etc.) and the intricacies of its design (patterns, symmetry, etc.)
ReplyDeleteIn addition, yesterday we met with Mrs. Barbacano's class to discuss the topic of education and school life in India. We first focused on similarities and differences between Bowman School and other schools attended by people we know (or schools we attended previously). Some observations we made (I also have a photograph of the Venn Diagram):
SIMILARITIES:
-Science/academic subjects
-Playground/recess
-Gym, extended day
-Snack (before recess)
-Library
-Line leaders/classroom jobs
-Computers/technology
-Students and teachers
DIFFERENCES:
-Playgrounds might be different
-Bowman does not have uniforms, other schools do
-Indoor vs. outdoor hallways/multiple buildings and floors
-Regular fields vs. "specially designed" sports fields
-Different ways of promoting/reinforcing good behavior
-Having recess/not having recess (at a high school)
After discussing the concept of stereotypes, and emphasizing that the schools we will see are not representative of ALL schools in India, we watched a video about the Kashmir School, located on a lake. Some observations we made were:
-Students use boats to get to school
-Boys (but not girls) can fish
-Children need to learn to swim on their own, not taught at schools
-Both boys and girls play cricket
-They might have smaller class sizes
-Students experienced life and death
-Zahida, the narrator, wanted to be a teacher and to help others
-Students wore uniforms
-Students had boat races during the day
Some wonderings we had were:
-Do they play other sports?
-How big are the classes?
-Do they have snack and lunch?
-Do they have recess? Gym?
-Are the boat races dangerous?
Tomorrow we will watch a video of a second school and share observations and wonderings about that school as well. We look forward to sharing those observations on the blog!