American Indian Museum

After studying North American Native Americans for nine weeks, we discovered that there is an American Indian museum about an hour away. Amelya expressed interest in going, so we went last Wednesday. Sean took the day off work to join us. The museum was quite small, but it was perfect for us. Amelya was able to see almost everything she had studied, including goggles worn by the Inuit in the far north, a seal skin parka, baskets, blankets, dolls, bowls, and sand paintings.

The girls enjoyed grinding dried corn to make flour, using a loom with yarn, trying on goggles and a headdress, and going inside of a wigwam. We also saw a special Olympic exhibit and a video about how the Olympic medals were made and what they represented. We bought the girls arrowheads as souvenirs.

Amelya had a worksheet to complete, basically listing all of the things she wanted to see at the museum, and then the things she actually SAW at the museum. On Thursday, for school, she completed a brainstorming worksheet to put her ideas in order, because her Friday assignment was to write a rough draft of a five paragraph essay for the first time. Prior to this, she had only written one paragraph to describe something she had seen or done. On Friday, we talked about the elements of the five paragraph essay, worked on an introduction paragraph together, and then she completed the rest on her own using her brainstorm worksheet. I must say, she did a FANTASTIC job, and I was so impressed. She made some errors as she wrote, but told me she didn't want to correct them as she made them, because she wants to have things to "fix" during the editing/ proofreading process next week. So funny!

Here are a few pictures from our field trip: