More Indians

This week we continued with our studies on Indians. We read a story about the Cherokee people and their new year "Harvest Festival"

Each year every family put out their fire in their house. And then the clan leader {family leader} would start a new fire and then each member of his family would take a coal and start their fire with it. So all fires came from one. they then would keep the fire burning all year long until the next Harvest Festival.

We used m&m's, tootsie rolls, and skittles. I built my fire with m&m's {coal} and tootsie rolls {logs} and then I started a fire. {using my skittles.. I used the red yellow and orange ones} Each of the boys built a place with their logs, and then I gave them some coals and the the fire started.

We talked about the word harvest and they types of things we harvest. this will help us easy into next week when we talk about the pilgrims.

Where did the Indians go?

This week we studied about Indians. It was a lot of fun we started by reading "Who Were the First North Americans?" I really enjoy the Usborne books, they have a ton of variety and there books are really easy to understand and fun for the kids.

We read about Totem polls and then we made our own. Only instead of wood.... {we have yet to reach an age of carving} so we used marshmallows and editable markers.




We watched some videos with Indian dances. {this is a hoop dance, and it's really cool}


We talked about the houses the Indians lived in and the difference between a Tee Pee and a Wigwam.


We made headdresses and necklaces. {Tim did really good with that, his fine motor skills are really starting to sharpen and he was so focused on beading his necklace}




{James is shooting an arrow} {wow.... and that's a really fuzzy picture}


This was a fun unit to work on, and the boys had a good time learning about the Native Americans.