Learning about the Woodland Natives

Time to catch up a bit on what's been happening in the classroom. Now that I'm hobbling about rather than wheeling about, things are starting to feel much more like normal. Yay!

This was a very busy afternoon for me. We had just learned about Wampum in our Natives unit and so we needed to make some...ish. I'm sure the natives don't use macaroni. Here are the kids making their wampum necklaces.

See, she did have one. Of course then the last half of the "beads" fell off...and then the string broke. Go figure eh?

After our necklaces we worked on making the classroom more spring like by adding bumblebees to our spring flowers and butterflies and budding branches. Yeesh, who knew that wrapping pipe cleaners around a pencil would be that difficult? But they were all thrilled with the results, even if all those brand new googley eyes keep falling off.

And then it was off into two groups to make native villages out of Popsicle sticks and plasticine. They LOVED doing this! They all sorted themselves into longhouse builders or palisade builders or garden makers and happily went on their ways. I have to say they ended up with some really cool things!

The garden, complete with "The Three Sisters".

Natives. Complete with their loin cloths? :) HA HA!! I just noticed that baby! That isn't a green loin cloth, that's a moss diaper! Oh those kids slay me, that's just too terrific! :)

The pond near the village and natives in their (black) birch bark canoes. We didn't have white plasticine!

A deer! I think..