Native Californians: Learning About Native American Tribes in Fourth Grade CA History
Learning about Native Americans felt like an important piece of California history that I didn’t want to jump past learn about missions and the Gold Rush when I was planning out our Fourth Grade Social Studies curriculum.
I’m sure I did an imperfect job of talking about this with my children, but I did my best to offer them resources that helped explore the different tribes native to California to get a overview of the vast differences between tribes and their history both before and after Europeans arrived.
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Books to Read
Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids
edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Modern day powwow experiences are shared in this anthology of short stories. I love how this focuses on modern experiences when so many Native American stories for kids depict teepees and bows and arrows. The history is important, of course, but so is remembering that Indigenous people still live in our country. This is a well written collection of stories by various authors.
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Children of the Longhouse
by Joseph Bruchac
This is an exciting chapter book that looks at native american life but also their interactions with outsiders. It would make for a good read aloud, independent read or bookclub book.
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The People with Five Fingers: A Native Californian Creation Tale
by John Bierhorst
A picture book version of a Native American creation story. My kids loved this one and how different it was from the story they’re familiar with.
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How Chipmunk Got Tiny Feet: Native American Animal Origin Stories
by Gerald Hausman
This is a collection of short stories along the same vein as the picture book above.
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The Girl Who Rode a Shark & Other Stories of Daring Women
by Ailsa Ross
We’ve used this collection of stories for several units. For this one we read Sacagawea’s story. I like the brief but interesting stories for introducing my kids to interesting and daring women.
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Unit Activity Ideas
Native Californians were one of our loops for November. About once a week we worked on the list of activities below. Learning a little about, really just scratching the surface, the tribes that lived in California.
Activities we did to explore Native Californian tribes:
- Research about Tribes: we pulled out a stack of books I borrowed from our public library on a variety of California Native Tribes and my kids completed this independent research project on one of the tribes shown above.
- Work on Map Skills with this California regions/geography and tribes worksheet.
- Learn about how the Sierra Miwoks made food with this STEAM activity.
- Read FRY BREAD by Kevin Noble Maillard and made our own Fry Bread (there is a recipe in the back of the book).
Learning about Native Californian Art:
- Browsed the stunning collection of artwork in Art of Native America from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
- Learned the basics of weaving with these simple loop weaving sets.
- We also made these collaborative wall hangings that involved weaving from Meri Cherry.
- Then we did Lab 6 from the Minecraft Lab for Kids that involves weaving and talks about Native American patterns.
We could definitely do more. This is such a huge part of American history and it is often glossed over. This certainly won’t be the last time we talk about this aspect of American History in our house, but it felt like a good look at some of the beauty of the different tribes especially the ones that lived on the same land that we occupy today.
