Native North American Unit, History & Geography At Home Part 1

This is a large Native North American Unit Study that followed our Pre Historic Man Unit . 

 Xander is very interested in Native Culture and Canada. 

This Study focused on our Native Cultures of Canada.

We found so much incredible information, and a trip we took to British Columbia last spring brought some incredible insight and understanding. Our Inuit neighbour gave Xander a lesson about the Kudlik, Inuit Oil lamp here, and we built Inuksuk (inukshuk english) here. 

We studied an overview of Canada's Native Groups/Regions, and how they migrated to North America. The two regions of Xander's choice were naturally (given his experience) Inuit People of the Canadian Arctic, and North West Coastal Native People. This was so interesting for him on so many levels because both regions were so similar in many ways, yet so very different in terms of climate and resources.

Above Xander is reading about the Bering Land Bridge theory of migration. The photos he is looking at show a present day aerial of the land mass, and photos at various points of what the shore lines would have looked like exposing the passage for human migration into North America.

All of the documents you see were printed from sources online, and I will give links for as many as I can. These are not documents that I am able to share because the images contained do not belong to me, but I can give you direct links to the source.

Xander and Ava attend a fantastic Canadian History class with our home school group at a local Museum monthly. He had another look and experience with learning about our Native Cultures there as well.

I created print/fact sheets for each Native Group/Region across Canada detailing their food, cooking, crops, clothing, tools, hunting, customs and ceremonies, housing, climate and land characteristics, resources, travel, animals, hand crafts and artwork.

The Groups we started our broad study with were as follows:

North West Coastal

Plateau People

Plains People

Eastern Woodlands

Subarctic People

Inuit

There were many things we watched. This was a cute animation talking about the Land Bridge.  This is an incredible website that can practically give you everything you need right there! This is an amazing series about Canada and our Native Cultures.

Some great books we used from our collection.

The British Museum Encyclopedia of Native North America

A Visual Dictionary of Native Communities (Crabtree Visual Dictionaries)

Houses of wood (Native Dwellings)

Houses of bark (Native Dwellings)

Houses of snow, skin and bones (Native Dwellings)

Chucky the Lonely Inukshuk

New France (Discovering Canada)

Discovering Canada Fur Traders

North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment

Melissa & Doug Canada Map

Xander was extremely interested in weaving. He has done some weaving in the past here, but with all of the talk about it during this study it he really wanted to give it another go. We built some bead/weaving looms. These were made so easily with 1 x 2" lumber, pre-drilled and screwed together. The nails are brads that were held with needle nose pliers and hammered in.

We created one for all of us to work together.

This was the beginning of a basic weaving project. We used yarn and a plastic yarn needle.

Below Xander is creating his own pattern for bead weaving a bracelet with seed beads.

I made a simple grid (you can use grid paper) pattern and we determined how many beads wide he wanted, and then he chose his bead colours.

He matched markers to the bead colours, and then started a pattern.

He is using a basic long bead needle. and beading floss.

The work in progress. This was cool because without realizing it, his bracelet had a repeating X pattern 💓

In Part 2, I will share our experience and look at North West Coastal Native People and Culture.

In Part 3, We visit with Arctic Inuit Culture.

Thanks for visiting with us!