Native American History

Here's some pics of our learning adventure on Native Americans. We started with Cherokee where we learned they made a lot of baskets and mats, so we weaved placemats, and that they used corn and cornmeal a lot in their cooking, so we made cornmeal cookies. Noah read us the recipe where he learned more about fractions and how to read recipes. They both love cooking and baking!! I let them take turns putting the ingredients in and stirring. The cookies are actually pretty good, they are like a cross between a corn muffin and a sugar cookie. Today we talked about the Shoshone Indians. They lived in the Great Basin area (Nevada, parts of California, Utah, Oregon and Idaho), and they moved around a lot looking for food, so they lived in tipi's so that they could take their homes with them. So we made a tipi in the kitchen around the breakfast table. We ate lunch in there (yes, even Daddy ate in there with us!!) and then read more about the Shoshone and made bread beads for necklaces all while we sat in our tipi!! That was fun, something I think the kids will remember! They will probably ask me to build a tipi all the time now!!! After our bread beads dry overnight, we can paint them and then make bead necklaces with them. It's been a good study so far. Next week we're going to visit a few of the Indian Mounds that are local to our area and then the following week we're going up to the Sunwatch Indian Village in Dayton. The kids have been excited for this unit study and it shows in their willingness to participate and learn. It's really a good study!!