American Girl Kaya Lesson Plan

We had our second class of our American Girl history class for our homeschool cooperative. It is going well and we enjoyed the day again. The class began with the girls sitting on the floor on a spread put blanket with a picture of a teepee. We originally thought we might be able to have a teepee but that did not work out so we showed pictures and talked some about them. One of my co-teachers talked a bit about Kaya and what her clothing was like and got the girls engaged.

I shared some information and pictures from the book Kaya's World - which is an outstanding resource. We talked about the time period, the importance of horses, teepees, longhouses, child responsibilities, toys, learning, weaving and their clothing.

Next a co-teacher and her daughter shared their recent experiences from this summer on a Native American reservation they served on. They showed us a drum and some jewelry they purchased there and the daughter played the drum for us. The girls took turns trying the drum and looking at the jewelry.

Today we had three stations again. The first was a station where they got to make dolls themselves. We had them make dolls out of cornhusks which they were all able to do and the dolls turned out very nice. Easy supplies, easy put together, cute results.

At the second station we had them beading bracelets with little beads. This ended up being a time consuming station but the girls all chatted and enjoyed visiting while they worked here.

The third station was a weaving station. One of the girls in the class let us use her tabletop weaving loom. While not authentic in style it got the point home about how time consuming weaving is and the basic principles behind it. Some of the girls really seemed to enjoy weaving and others were quickly bored by it. I asked each of them how they would feel about doing that all day long and only one said they thought it would be enjoyable if there was nothing else to do and they could talk to their friends.

We ran overtime this class period because I was not paying attention to the clock we went a little over our 55 minute time limit. We try to keep it around 50 minutes. I am enjoying being a part of a class that brings history alive for the kids.

Peace,
Tenniel