Native American Cultures: Northeastern Woodlands

This semester my friend Wynter and I are teaming up again to teach History and Science. She's doing Space and I am doing Native American Cultures. I'm using the book Explore Native American Cultures! as a guide and for ideas for activities.

The first week, I did an introduction to what Native Americans are, where they came from, and the different regions that they lived in. We made a salt dough map of the United States, and painted each region of different color, and labeled them. In the subsequent weeks, we'll take turns studying each region individually.

The second week that it was my turn to teach, we learned about the Northeastern Woodland region. Since we only meet for History twice a month, it's not possible to do all the activities with the class. But because I think this is an interesting topic, I've expanded it a bit and am doing extra things at home with just my kids to go along with what we learn in History class. The last two weeks I've been reading Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare for family read aloud time. The boys are really liking it. We should finish up in the next day or two.

I think it's beneficial for them to see the vocabulary words we've been learning about for class being used in a story, and vice-versa. I made a crossword puzzle out of all the vocab words in the Northeastern Woodlands chapter, and told the kids if they did the reading and completed the crossword puzzle before class, that I would give them a treat. I assigned Lincoln and Ivan to pair up and work together. And it was fun to hear them say things like, "Our word is moccasin, oh! like the ones Attean's grandfather make for Matt in the story." Connections are being made, and that makes me feel like the work has been worthwhile.

Another day the boys made longhouses as a project. They decided that gluing straw all along the sides was a lot of work, and they weren't super interested in completing it. But they were very excited to tell their friends everything they knew about longhouses when it came up in class. :)

I actually really enjoyed the prep work for class this week. I felt like I learned a lot of cool things on an interesting topic. I knew the kids wouldn't be overly thrilled about writing down everything I wanted to share with them, so I made the a little printable to cut out and glue into their notebooks. And then we talked about the culture and customs of the Northeastern Woodland tribes, and then I told them about some of the well-known Native American people from that region. Turns out Wynter is a descendant of Pocahontas. Cool!

After the lesson we made Hiawatha Belts. The five shapes on the belt represent the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, the tree in the middle is the tribe whose land was in the middle and where all the tribes came together and buried their war weapons and agreed to be peaceful to one another.

Next up, Southeast region.