November is Native American Heritage Month

In 1990, President Bush named November Native American Heritage Month. It has continued yearly as an opportunity to celebrate the culture and contributions of the first Americans. This year, I am homeschooling my first-grader and we started our history/social studies with the Age of Exploration. We moved on to learn about the Native Americans who inhabited the country prior to European discovery. So, while we could have waited until November to do our studies, our timeline allowed us to learn about this amazing group of people a little early.

My great grandmother was full Native American, but my grandfather could never remember which tribe we are related to. Regardless, it's so interesting to learn about the differences from tribe to tribe. I have several books here at home that we use as reading material, but I found a great workbook on Education.com to help us add another element to our learning. The Native American Culture for Kids workbook is 35 pages and features a number of tribes including Comanche, Hopi, Lakota, and Mohawk, and features several explanations of tribal symbols and craft activities. So far we've made a feather headdress and a shield, and they also have a dreamcatcher. You can opt to print out a full set of 17 tribes without the additional crafts if you prefer. Each page includes a brief introduction to the tribe, a reading comprehension activity and another activity such as a word search or decoding game. The workbook is listed for 3rd grade, but I use this with my advanced first-grader and we haven't had any trouble.

Here is our headdress activity:

We also printed out a list of Native American symbols and we used those to decorate our paper plate tipis (teepee, tepee). We got the tipi idea from a pinterest page, but it included straws and rolling the paper plate, and the directions were not processing for me for some reason. So we cut the bottom off of our paper plates, rolled them into a cone and stapled them when we got them to the perfect spot. we gently folded open the bottom corners to look like the doorway flaps of the tipis. Oh, but before we did the rolling of the plates, I had the kids use the symbols to decorate them. I don't know what it is about symbols, but my son loves them, and this activity (and the headdress and shield) really worked for him. He got into it and put in the time and effort, and I think he has memorized at least 25 symbols. It's amazing. Here's how we made the tipi...

Tipi Steps:

Cut off small bottom portion of paper plate.

Decorate plate with native american symbols.

Decorate on both side if you wish.

Roll paper plate into a cone and staple.

 

Have fun celebrating Native American Heritage month. There are so many educational opportunities that can be incorporated into your curriculum, from growing crops to grinding corn, to creating replicas of common Native American items. For more information on Native American Heritage Month visit http://nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/about/.