Native American Unit

The second grade classes have begun our final unit of the year with Native Americans. We began talking about the culture, learning locations, special names, and made projects.

Every student has chosen a special Native American name and created their own clan in the classroom.
To hold our work we made parfleches. Parfleches are a Native American rawhide bag, typically used for holding dried meats. We made ours out of brown paper bags and drew Native American symbols.

Actual Native American parfleche. Photo from www.google.com

To distinguish our clans and our special names, we created totem poles to keep on our tables. Totem poles are monumental sculptures carved from large trees.

Every student created a medicine wheel. In Native American spirituality, the Medicine Wheel represents harmony and connections and is considered a major symbol of peaceful interaction among all living beings on Earth. As the student makes good choices, is a great friend, and respectfuly student they earn beads to add to their medicine wheel.
Every Friday afternoon during our group activity the two classes join together in the commons to have our Pow Wow. We hold our totem poles, walk to special drum beats, and honor our Chiefs of the week.

Medicine Wheel picture ww.google.com

Every Chief is honored with words of praise and recieves a special feather to put on their medicine wheel. The Chief then honors someone in their tribe that they feel has done an excellent job that week.

Our Chiefs of the week:

Miss Stark's Class:
Powerful Eagle (Will)

Quick Butterfly (Kate M)

Strong Eagle (Grant)

Spring Bird (Ella)

Shining Star (Ava)

Mrs. Gouttierre's Class:

Climbing Opossoum (Iris)

Beautiful Butterfly (Devin)

Sleak Falcon (Sam)

Wise Owl (Gibbs)

Warm Sunshine (Ella)