Indians today

For the next three days we are reading three books for our American Girl bookclub on Thursday. We're to read the first three books about a Native American girl named Kaya. So today we're halfway through book one already and have been doing some learning and activities. Kaya is a Nez Perce indian, so she lived in the area where Washington, Oregon, and Idaho meet. It was easy to find on our big wall map as we have family living in Washington right now. While her family moved with the seasons and used a tepee in summer, the tepee is not what I think of as a tepee. Yes, it had the poles, but instead of hides to cover it they used mats of woven tule reed. Neat fact: the reeds allowed a breeze in dry weather but in wet weather the reeds swelled and kept the tepee dry inside!

For the first story Kaya's family just went the the salmon fishing grounds. After looking at photos of salmon, talking about how they caught, cooked, and preserved them, we will probably cook salmon tomorrow for dinner. Yes, my kids like it. Even with my sad fish cooking skills. We're going to watch the movie Brother Bear today as salmon are in it a lot while we discuss the salmon life cycle.

Kaya's tribe expected older children to be responsible, and early in the story Kaya forgets to care for her young twin brothers while they are playing. While nothing happens to the boys, it is a great lesson of obedience, and that happens to be one theme that is throughout the Kaya books. It is a theme we'll be working on this week with some fun games like "Eetsa says...". Eetsa is Mother in Nez Perce.

Just for fun the kids did the typical indian craft, construction paper feather headbands. It's not something really prevalent in Kaya's tribe, but my little tribe loved it. Here are some pictures:

While the children loved it, one of our cats did not! She was actually hissing at the kids and fluffing up to her considerably puffy self warning them to leave her alone. Here she is: