Saturday, March 06, 2010

Meet Pocahontas and Aponi

Keeping DD supplied with good reading material is quite a challenge. When DD finds a series she likes, she reads continuously until she’s read the entire series. I recently heard about an American History curriculum using the American Girl series. It’s designed to be used with students in grades 2-5. Although DD's only in the first grade, I think she’ll learn a lot. I’ve been buying AG books at a steady pace off of E-bay and Amazon. I think we’ve finally got all that we need. We plan to cover the period of time beginning in 1764 and continuing through the 1940’s featuring 8 American Girl characters and 48 books. We plan to cover one book (together) per week …although DD has already finished reading 30 of the books. We started the Kaya series last week. Kaya is a young girl from the Nez Perce Indian tribe of northwestern U.S. We’ve completed two books  and DD is loving it!
The girls enjoyed learning about some of the Native American customs and beliefs. They loved making dream catchers
and totem poles.
DD learned how to play several string games like the Native American girls played. She even showed some of these to Daddy Darling who makes a pretty mean Jacob’s ladder. LOL She also enjoyed eating salmon for dinner one night, something she probably wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t learned about Kaya’s tribe in Book 1.
DD and DB also learned about using corn husks in cooking
and making dolls.
Here are the dolls after a little paint and corn husks hair extensions.
The girls also chose Indian names for themselves...
Meet Pocahontas (she who loves to play)...DD
and
Aponi (butterfly)...Doodlebug.


4 comments:

Marisa said...

Oh my gosh! Those are some awesome things they made! I love the dolls out of corn husks. Very cool!

PandaMom said...

MamaDarling, you are THE best homeschool mom!!!! I love all of it! ; )

liasmomma said...

They did a great job!!! I want to hear more abt. this history curr. idea. I've heard about it in passing before and I think Lia would enjoy that for next year. E-mail me or call me one of these days.

Trish

Anonymous said...

I love the art projects the girls did and they look like they really enjoyed them. This sure beats trying to memorize dates of battles for history class.