School Fair Focuses on World Cultures

For many, mention of the medieval era evokes images of heraldry, pipe music and tonsured monks laboriously transcribing Scripture, but sixth- and seventh-graders at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies in Reseda have been looking at a bigger picture.

In addition to bagpipes and scone tasting, their Medieval Faire on Friday included origami workshops, Aztec dancing and West African adinkra cloth stamping.

The fair was the “culminating event” for an interdisciplinary approach to studying world cultures, said dashiki-clad social studies teacher Susan Hostler, one of several faculty members who coordinated the event.

Seventh-graders, working in groups, selected a game, food or craft and sponsored a booth, such as kite-making or hair-braiding.

The school’s sixth-graders, each issued a “passport” beforehand, visited the fair and made themselves a Zen garden in a plastic foam tray or sampled African injera bread, and got their passports stamped.

“We want them to have an appreciation of various cultures,” Hostler said.

“We’re hoping they’ll see how similar cultures are--how we’re more alike than we are different.”

That was the case with sixth-grader Melba Sarmiento, who collects dolls and likes to give them as gifts. She has “lots of Barbies,” but more special to her are the Salvadoran dolls passed down through her family from generation to generation.

On Friday, she was introduced to daruma dolls from Japan, a country where children learn about their culture and history through dolls.

The fair’s setting may have been medieval, but it got some help from the 20th century.

Visitors to Daniel Kane and Alex Kunkel’s booth received a lesson on the history of golf--a sport they said was invented by the Vikings and brought to Scotland--and the chance to use a graphite putter on some artificial turf to accompanying music from the CD soundtrack of “Braveheart.”

Daniel and Alex, of course, were appropriately clad in homemade Scottish attire.

“I found out all about kilts on the Internet,” Daniel said.