Celebrating Culture

American Indian Heritage day was Friday, September 22.  The day worked perfectly into our continent study as we were researching North America.  We discussed that the American Indians were the first Americans.  We also discussed how there are hundreds of different tribes in the United States, all with different traditions, languages, and cultures to celebrate.  Here are just a few highlights of our day. 

We read the beautiful book Jingle Dancer.  Then we got to see and feel a real jingle dress that our district's Indian Education coach Carolyn Rusche lent us for the week.  The students were shocked at how heavy the dress was.

We read a traditional Cherokee story of the three sisters.  The three sisters were corn, beans, and squash.  The story was told to teach how to best plant the three crops for an optimal harvest.  Then, we sampled some corn muffins. We also sampled some buffalo and elk jerky. The elk got rave reviews.  I was really surprised how many of the children both tried and liked the different jerky!



During math, we played a game with pumpkin seeds.  The game used seven seeds all with a different symbols drawn on one side.  The symbols were worth different amounts.  For instance, the bird was worth 2 points.  Students added the worth of each roll.  The had to play three rounds to find the player with the largest sum.  They were having so much fun with the game, I don't think they realized how much mental math they were doing.