Native American Unit

Columbus Day was set aside as the second Monday in October as a federal holiday in 1934. Slowly celebrations of Native American culture has been gaining recognition as well.  For example, South Dakota renamed Columbus Day to Native American Day in 1990. This Columbus Day,  more cities are recognizing Native Americans (see this CBS article). According to CBS News, nine cities will be celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day. Those cities include  Albuquerque; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Olympia, Washington for the first time this year.

Today, I thought I would highlight some of the posts we have about Native Americans:

I’ll start with this blog post about our  Visit with Pocahontas’ Great (Gr, Gr…) Granddaughter last fall. We had an amazing time. We got to see a wide variety of artifacts.  The kids got to hold some artifacts that have been dated back 400 years!!  I have a whole lot of really amazing pictures in that post:

Also, I thought I would highlight some of the Native American resources we have that are free here on the blog. We did a large unit on Native Americans last year — studying Native Americans of the Northeast and Southeast.  We also touched on a couple of Native America groups from the West before running out of time with our unit.

• Native Americans of the Northeast (Part I: The Algonquian Indians)
•  Native Americans of the Northeast (Part II, Iroquois Indians) where I shared our Wampum belt project and the printable you see below:

• 6 Native American Picture Books for Kids

• Native Americans of the Southeast: Cherokee, Seminole Indians, Trail of Tears

• Tecumseh! An Outdoor Drama in Ohio

I thought I’d also include links to our study of the ancient Incas, Aztecs and Mayans:

• Aztecs and Incas

• Ancient Mayan Civilization
• Ancient Mayan Indian Rugs

• Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: God’s Eye — Yarn Craft

• Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: Wood Animalitos – Oaxacan (Mexican) Folk Art

• The History of Chocolate from the Mayans and Aztecs… to Today!

The kids loved doing this when we studied the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans–  Make Your Own Chocolate Kit,8oz (affiliate link)

We also did a world music class years ago — and this post has all our activities about Mexico and South America: World Music Class: Games and Music of Mexico and South America.

• Navajo of the Southwest – history notebook pages  (free printable)

• The West: Cheyenne, Sioux and the Plains Wars: Sand Creek to Wounded Knee (free printable)

• For our unit, we read the book Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West – Adapted for Young Readers (affiliate link) by  Amy Ehrlich, Dee Brown (approximately 180 pages) which covered all of these events (and much, much more).This was a powerful book, but it definitely covers some disturbing events so I would pre-read the book if you have sensitive kids.  We read the entire book aloud and it gave a really thorough overview of what happened to the Cheyenne and Sioux tribes in the period from 1864 (Sand Creek) through 1890 (Wounded Knee).We also watched a number of documentaries about this period.  We watched a number of episodes from the documentary, 500 Nations (hosted by Kevin Costner). (affiliate link)  The kids (and I!!) liked these episodes and learned a lot.

Disclosure:  Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.