Native American Unit

After our Mountain Man unit, it felt quite natural to ease into a Native American unit. So many of the artifacts from the Mountain Man Rendezvous were Native American. Also, we watched a couple awesome drum dances while we were there and the kids could not get enough. Again, I got many of my ideas for the unit from Frolic and Farce, although my kids' interest died after awhile so we moved on. Here are some of the things we did during our Native American Unit. Unfortunately I only managed to capture a few moments on camera.

• Read lots of books (some of our favorites listed below)
• Watched lots of home videos - our wedding video, one of my grandparents we had made for them and a few I've created over the years
• Created totem poles
• Made fry bread - this was a hit so we did it a couple of times, once for dinner and once as a dessert
• Created our own drum circle with different drums we created
• Pulled out Dylan's Thanksgiving costumes from Kindergarten last year and dressed up like Native Americans
• Visited the Museum of Natural History - the first Monday of the month is free! They have a whole section on Native Americans with miniature figurines in display cases. Reminds me of Night at the Museum. :) My kids LOVE this museum! They often have new things they are displaying so it changes from time to time, which makes it easier to go more than once. Last year they did a huge display on frogs, which my kids really enjoyed.
• Visited the Treehouse Museum - we spent some time in the teepee and read a few books about Native Americans, but again, we always end up doing whatever draws the kids in the most that day.
• Another trip to the zoo. We were specifically looking for a wolf, but never found him. Dylan was pretty disappointed. I love how he figures out my intent and then is on a mission. He is really good at incorporating play and other day to day events into our unit. He got out his zoo map and was guiding me to our destination.
• Practiced shooting Dylan's new wooden bow and arrow (no worries, the arrow is rubber)
• Watched Pocahontas (I hate that Disney completely botched the story - even Dylan caught onto that fact - but it was still fun to watch the movie).
• Listened to lots of Native American music. Dylan is in a little music class - Musikgarten - and they had a whole unit on different Native American tribes, complete with music, so I referred to that often.
• Made a book of months. Dylan made a cool calendar with one month per page on it. He wrote the name of the month at the top of each page and then drew things to represent what we do that particular month. It was pretty cute to see what he came up with for each month.
• We revisited the unit again briefly at Thanksgiving, talking about the pilgrims and Indians, making headbands with feathers for a family party and reading stories I borrowed from a neighbor about the first Thanksgiving, Squanto and Native American tribes throughout history.

Dylan's totem pole

Forming a human totem pole

Trip to the Museum of Natural History

Marcos was able to join us on his day off

Another trip to the Treehouse Museum

Thanksgiving craft

Pilgrims and Indians - a short play about Thanksgiving the cousins put on during a family night activity we did the week of Thanksgiving

Books We Read

Again, I got my original book list from Home School Frolic and Farce and supplemented with a few more I found that worked for us.

Like the kids from Frolic and Farce, this book was also a favorite for my children. Dylan loves hearing about how other people live and learning about all sorts of different cultures. It was eye-opening for him to realize how the lives of Native Americans have changed over the years. Also, we got the recipe for our fry bread from this book.