Article Categories

»	Arts & Entertainment
»	Automotive
»	Business
»	Careers & Jobs
»	Education & Reference
»	Finance
»	Food & Drink
»	Health & Fitness
»	Home & Family
»	Internet & Online Businesses
»	Miscellaneous
»	Self Improvement
»	Shopping
»	Society & News
»	Sports & Recreation
»	Technology
»	Travel & Leisure
»	Writing & Speaking

Reprint Article Code

Category: Articles » Education & Reference » Teaching » Article » Article Code

Celebrating Black History Month

What do Sarah Boone, Alexander Miles, Garrett Morgan, Robert F. Flemmings, and John Standard all have in common? They were all African-American inventors! As part of Black History Month, have your children learn about them and their inventions. African-American Inventors and Their Inventions 1. Sarah Boone - ironing board 2. Alexander Miles - elevator 3. Garrett Morgan - traffic signal 4. Robert F. Flemmings - guitar 5. John Standard - refrigerator 6. George T. Sampson - clothes drier 7. D. Johnson - lawn mower 8. Bessie Blount - a device that allows amputees to feed themselves 9. ... read more

Article Title:

Article Body:

African-American Inventors and Their Inventions

1. Sarah Boone - ironing board
 
2. Alexander Miles - elevator
 
3. Garrett Morgan - traffic signal
 
4. Robert F. Flemmings - guitar
 
5. John Standard - refrigerator
 
6. George T. Sampson - clothes drier
 
7. D. Johnson - lawn mower
 
8. Bessie Blount - a device that allows amputees to feed themselves
 
9. Otis Boykin - a variable resistor used in guided missile parts
 
10. George Grant - world's first patent for a golf tee
 
11. John Lee Love - pencil sharpener rotated by hand
 
12. Richard Spikes - automobile directional signals
 
13. William Purvis - self-inking hand stamp
 
14. Kevin Woolfolk - hamster workout wheel
 
15. Patricia Bath - first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical invention, a method for removing cataract lenses using a laser device
 
16. W. A. Martin - lock
 
17. G. W. Murray - planter
 
18. F. M. Jones - air conditioning unit
 
19. A. C. Richardson - bottle
 
20. E. R. Robinson - electric railway trolley
 
21. J. R. Winters - fire escape ladder
 
22. B. H. Taylor - rotary engine
 
23. Donald Cotton - propellants for nuclear reactors
 
24. Norbert Rillieux - a method for refining sugar
 
25. Emmett W. Chappelle - techniques for the detection of bacteria in urine, blood, drinking water, and foods
 
26. J. W. Smith - lawn sprinkler
 
27. W. U. Moody - game board design
 
28. A. L. Cradle - ice cream mold

Activities

1. Research other inventions by African Americans.
 
2. Find the dates of these inventions and make a timeline of them.
 
3. Discuss how life would be very different without these inventions.
 
4. Discuss the process of inventing something and have your students come up with their own inventions. They should give their inventions a name and write a description.
 
5. Classify these inventions into such categories as Things Around the House and Things for Safety.
 
6. Alphabetize the inventors' names.
 
7. Have some children cut out pictures of the inventions and paste them on the left side of index cards. Have other children use sticky labels to write or type the invention and paste them on the right side of the index cards to match the pictures. Make puzzles by cutting down the center of these cards using different patterns. You can also use craft scissors which come in a variety of patterns. 
 
8. Create a criss-cross puzzle or a word-find puzzle with these inventors' last names.

I hope these ideas are useful and have inspired your own creative thinking!

Author Bio:

Some other recently published teaching articles

Celebrating Black History Month by Freda J. Glatt, MS
What do Sarah Boone, Alexander Miles, Garrett Morgan, Robert F. Flemmings, and John Standard all have in common? They were all African-American inventors! As part of Black History Month, have your children learn about ...

Our Educational System has it all wrong. by Morgan F Bryan
Before we can say what is wrong with our educational system, we should define the term.The purpose of the educational system is to: Pass on Knowledge Relate ...

The Difficult Job of Cost-Benefit Analysis and Government Decision Making by Gary Hadler
This is another in the series of articles I have been writing on decision making. This article gives a brief overview of Cost-Benefit Analysis and why it is difficult to calculate ...

Happy New Year! by Freda J. Glatt, MS
These New Year activities will help to usher in a brand new year. January Starts the Year January, February, March, April, May. The first five months are A-OK. June and ...

Home Schooling Can Be Beneficial. But Are There Disadvantages? by Nic haffner
There are more than one reason why more and more parents choose home schooling instead of the traditional schools; the ...

A Christmas and Chanukah Play by Freda J. Glatt, MS
Learn about Christmas and Chanukah through this conversation between two friends. Narrator: Two friends, Greg and Charlie, meet at a park on a ...

Publisher Guidelines

You may reprint this article electronically in your newsletter or on your website, free of charge.

If you reprint this article from our site, then you must keep everything intact. This includes the articles title, author name, articles body, authors bio / resource box, the links contained within the article, all copyright notices and the link pointing back to our site. All links within the article must also be made active / hyperlinks.