Native American History

After months of studying Native American History, Madison, her classmates, and the entire third grade class at Irene Reither Primary School were able to display what they learned through their artwork, pottery, and a big project on poster board. The third graders were also responsible to give an oral speech in front of their classmates sometime during the week, and Madison practiced for days to get each fact correct and word in the right place.

So from 2:00 - 3:00 p.m., Emma and I were able to walk with Madison from her classroom to all the other third grade classrooms in the school, and to prevent traffic jams of third graders, parents, and their siblings, we got to walk outside from one class to another, then walk inside, and then outside again. The picture above is Emma peeking around the corner telling me to hurry up.

Madison's favorite part of Native American History was the pottery made by the Southwest Desert Indian women. The pottery made and painted by the women and taught to the girls, and the women also made the necklaces for the tribe that was passed from generation to generation. It was one of the greatest responsibilities any of the women had in any of the tribes, plus, she got to make her own piece of pottery and paint it.

Madison learned that buckskins were used by Native Americans for artwork. The third graders were given legends with simplistic pictures used by Native Americans to tell stories or pass along messages, and then the teachers burned the edges of the paper to give it an authentic buckskin look.

In one of the classrooms, Madison and Emma found a bed with a Native American blanket on it. Many of the kids stood around the bed and talked about the patterns and colors found in the blanket.

After about 45 minutes, Madison, Emma, Madison's class, and I made it back around to her classroom, and we then discussed all the different projects we saw in all the different classrooms. Both Emma and Madison loved the pottery, especially one of the students made a smaller matching bowl to accompany the regular sized bowl all the kids made.

Madison did a great job on her project, pottery, artwork, and speech, and we all had a great time walking from classroom to classroom discussing all the different projects the students presented and how the different Native American groups differed from one another.

Gregg