MFW Adventures Week 4 - Native Americans Part I

Raise your hand if you've ever been fascinated by the Native Americans!! Who hasn't? How hard it must have been for them to exist without all of the luxuries that we have today. Yet, how fun might would it have been to live a life focused on community, survival and enjoyment together! I guess there were some dark, gory parts to their existence as well but its much more fun to focus on the fun stuff!

North American Indians

We used this awesome book this week that came with the MWF curriculum to learn about all of the early Native American tribes from across the country. We learned which tribes lived in tepees, wigwams, chickees, longhouses, etc. and which ones fished, hunted buffalo or lived off the land. We learned about which ones were the first to acquire horses from the English and Spanish settlers, which ones were more prone to be war-like, and which ones were skilled in building canoes and plank houses. It was fascinating to learn together about how each group created a way of living of their own based on the land and resources they had to work with.

Using information from the book and resources that I found online, I created a document that outlined each of the tribes with pictures of each tribe's members, way of life and housing arrangements. We continued to review this throughout the week as we looked at a map of the country to point out where each tribe lived and why they lived they way they did. We were able to finish Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims and talked about what happened to his tribe and why it might have happened. We talked about people - how people have a choice in how they treat others. Its hard for even me to fathom how humans can be so inhumane sometimes. How did one even come up with the idea of making slaves out of other humans? How God must have had to turn His head away from us so many times throughout history. 

To reinforce our learning, we made wigwams and tepees to add to our Jamestown settlement. I let the kids tell me where around the settlement the wigwams would have been and we discussed how the tepees didn't belong near Jamestown as it was the Plains Indians who used tepees, not the natives near the east coast.

We didn't study about light this week but we were interrupted from our wigwam making by a nice surprise on our wall. The mix of sun and rain clouds projected this beautiful display through the window in our front door to open discussion about rainbows and how they are made. 

But science this week focused on our our solar system, the stars and gravity. We learned about the closest star to earth (hint in case you don't know: the earth revolves around it) and about constellations that we can see. One night we took a blanket outside and as a family we looked at the stars, found the constellations and speculated as to whether the moving light we saw was an airplane or the space station.

Of course we supplemented our solar system discussions with several videos this week. Magic School Bus had three episodes for us to watch (MSB Gets Lost in Space, MSB Gains Weight, and MSB Out of this World) and we used YouTube to find a few of Beakman's Worlds episodes that included portions about the sun, moon and gravity.

On Friday we took learning outside and met our Navigator friends at Fairhope for some playtime. We start Navigators Co-op next week so this was an opportunity for the kids to meet some of the kids who they'll be taking classes with. Brooklee is enrolled in Bugs, Amazing Artists and Creative Cupcake while Kellan is signed up for Sensical Side of Seuss, Nature Explorers and P.E. 

Brooklee and Kellan started homeschool swim class this week and though the first day was a challenge, by Friday's class things had gotten better. On Wednesday, Kellan was terrified of the water and it took a while for the teacher's assistant to convince him to get in the water. She worked with him one-on-one while Brooklee joined the class of kids who were all at least five years older than her (which is a pretty big difference considering she's only 6.) But, eventually Kellan began doing what he needed to do and Brooklee held her own, swimming laps back and forth in the pool for an hour straight. On Friday, there were two more kids Kellan's age in his class and he wasn't at all afraid to get in the water. Brooklee had another girl her age in her class and she was very excited after class to tell me how much fun she had. She even got to climb the rope almost to the top of the building and then jump off into the 6ft deep water where the coach was waiting to help her to the side. It was truly the highlight of her day! 

It has been an incredible, but challenging week as we are beginning to add extracurricular activities to our schedule and preparing to add co-op next week. We enjoyed learning about Native Americans and our solar system so much and felt like we weren't able to spend as much time as we wanted, so we are using next week, which is a 3 day week for us anyways, to continue learning. I am reminded every night when I lay my head down and reflect on my day of what a blessing it is to have this opportunity to learn with my children. To lead them in life as they learn and grow. To spend this time with them while they are young, impressionable and innocent (though I hesitate to use that word with them on most days) and to have the ability to use every day learning, classroom skills and Biblical teaching to raise my children in a way that I pray will result in God-fearing world changers who are ready and eager to make a difference for Christ.