Homeschool Theme of the Week: Thanksgiving & Native Americans!

One of the positives of homeschooling is the amount of things I learn as I teach and prepare activities. :) This year, I have discovered so many interesting details and facts about Thanksgiving! We spent a good deal of time one week on the Pilgrims and now have spent some more time learning about the Native Americans involved in the story.

When reading about the Wampanoag indians, I learned they would make belt and headband designs from purple and white shells.  Thus, one of the first things we did was to make a purple and white headband.  Here is a picture of mine (top) and my daughter's headband (below).  If you would like to make one too, you can download the pattern for free here.



 I also decided this seemed like a wonderful unit for encouraging my daughter to learn how to perform simple hand weaving (only we used paper to make our indian basket). After some guidance from me, she just took off with this and did a terrific job!



To make our woven mat into a basket/purse, I simply folded one end up a bit, glued it in place, hole punched the edges and added some jute.  :)



I saw a cute activity on Pinterest involving bubble wrap and indian corn and thought we would try it as well. Unfortunately, I could not find some small bubble wrap, so I improvised and glued some cheerios to a piece of cardboard. We then painted the cheerios and stamped the paper. This seemed to work just fine for us and when they were done drying, my daughter cut out the corn shapes, and we glued the corn and leaf pieces together to make our very own indian corn!



What better place to store our indian corn than in our very own handmade indian bag/basket?  :)



Another of our activities was to make a real purse from suede.  I found a kit at our local hobby store and helped my daughter complete it!

Of course, good books are a must, and we learned SO much from reading some of the ones below!  :)



Linking up to:
www.abcand123learning.com
www.letkidscreate.blogspot.com
www.gingersnapcrafts.com
www.houseofhepworths.com
www.momontimeout.com
This post is linked to No Ordinary Blog Hop
http://www.jdaniel4smom.com/
http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/
http://www.toysinthedryer.com/2011/11/introducing-fun-stuff-fridays.html