At Home in the Forest: The Ohop Indian Village Experience

Ready? Set? Touch everything! 

(Except for the poisonous plants!)

Welcome to the Ohop Indian Village 

The Valley of the Sound of Rushing Water

The Navigators and the Gemstones went back in time before

Walmarts and Costcos

Electricity and running water

Iphones and Ipads

and learned how to survive and thrive 

as Native American Ohop children.

To the Native Americans, the forest was their home, their play ground, their school, their grocery store, their pharmacy, their lumber yard, their hardware store, their everything! No wonder they highly respected and took good care of it!

We had done a lot of reading and activities at school but there is nothing like rolling up your sleeves and experiencing it!

Pounding soaked cedar bark into soft fibers 

These soft fibers can then be twisted together into cordage and made into cloth.

Can you guess what this is? 

Answer at bottom of blog :) 

Making ornamental jewelry

 

A bentwood box like the one in the book Raven

In this trickster tale, the raven found the sun in a box and brought it back to his people. 

Tanning a deer hide

Making yarn out of bighorn sheep or goat wool

Giving weaving a try--over, under, over, under...

Trying on the what boys would wear.

Tule reed, wheat grass and and bear grass were all used to make clothing.

  

This student is part Cowlitz and she brought her own personal drum. 

A basket made from cattail reeds

This basket, called the Mount Rainier basket,  is made from bear grass, a light colored grass that dyes well. 

(We were asked to not touch this very old artifact.)

A shirt made from grasses

Making our mark for the future--a harbor seal petroglyph

 

Play is an important part of a Native American child.

It is a way to learn the skills necessary for survival.

A spontaneous group game of ring toss

Spear throwing practice

Sharpening a slate arrowhead

Learning how to be still, aim and hit a target

How did I do?

Ironwood is good for nails, staffs and arrows because it is straight and strong.

Ironwood also resists heat and is good for picking up hot rocks. 

The hot rocks are used to boil water.

 

A stick, a rock, and a bone make a fine working drill.

Various types of canoes for various types of uses

  

Hollowing out a future canoe 

  

Making music on a plank drum

They called their group "Native Awesome."

Ready for part 2 of our trip

The native plant nature hike

  

The shaman was an expert on all plants.
But each person was responsible for developing their own "special eye"
for a specific plant
so that they could look at a plant and know if it was good or bad. 
This was a way to keep the community 
 healthy and safe.

She taught us about plants that are beneficial for diarrhea and for upset stomach, 
plants that stimulate appetite and plants that suppress it,
plants that are edible and full of good vitamins and plants that are poisonous,
plants that sting us (stinging nettle) and plants that take the sting away (fern)
and much more.

False Solomon's Seal
A powerful narcotic pain reliever


Trillium--a time teller
Goes from white to pink to purple throughout the season

 

The cedar tree--the "tree of life" for Pacific Northwest Native Americans

This tree is over 250 feet tall and is therefore over 250 years old.

One Navigator expresses our feelings best!

Answer to the "what is it" question:

Put some some moss or animal fur in the center

Attach it to baby

and voila

A DIAPER!

Treasuring our Treasures--Why We Do Science As We Do

The Navigators have spent the past few months studying animals, plants, and conservation through the lens of our overarching concept “treasure”.  

We do this in order to stimulate higher-level thinking by providing a “big idea” that helps us process the world around us. It also enables us to apply the “big idea” across the curriculum, incorporating literature, writing, social studies, math, art and more to our studies, making connections that increase our understanding. Here are some ways that the first graders are beginning to become critical and creative thinkers:

•         Comparing and contrasting ideas
•         Providing reasoning for their thinking
•         Evaluating  situations
•         Evaluating others’ ideas
•         Thinking independently
•         Applying ideas to different contexts
•         Developing stories (“Feathers” play and stop-motion film!)
•         Thinking of unique ideas/outside the box

Here's a glimpse into our classroom STEAM Lab! 

Content: We start with the basics—vocabulary, needs and parts of plants, etc.—and go from there. It’s interesting, there isn’t a lot of botany web pages geared toward younger students. But we were able to handle it, excelling in higher-level and problem solving and having fun in the process!

A close-up look at the stem of a celery plant

We did tons of experiments plus each student had their own plant and came up with a question and an experiment.  We then compiled all of our experiments, compared them to the control plant and to each other’s and then drew conclusions from our findings. We were all surprised that the “crowded plant” experiment grew two times as much as the others!

"What will happen if I feed my plant Miracle Grow?"

"What will happen if I put my plant in the refrigerator?"


"What will happen if I "water" my plant with Coke?"


This project involved some engineering. "Will my plant grow up this tube to find the light?"

Differentiation: We had activities that challenge and engage both emergent and advanced readers, writers and thinkers. 

Research: The fifth grade Alchemists came and helped us do research on the internet on the various uses of plants. What a joy as a teacher to see my former students so adept, kind and helpful as they mentored the Navigators. All were engaged, both mentors and mentorees, and learned a lot about their chosen plant. We then wrote a five (at least) sentence research paragraph about the uses of our plant and shared it with our classmates.

We incorporated art into science:  Making  beautiful plant models

 Making  Georgia O'Keeffe flowers

Project-based learning: This is a model in which students are encouraged to engage in learning activities that are integrated with real-world issues and practices. We became Fish and Wildlife Department Scientists checking out the health of a local orchard’s environment by looking at the pollination rate of its recent apple crop. I had to tell the kids that we were just pretending, that no, we weren’t going to actually send our results to the government. But maybe someday….

Our auction project also became a PBL activity. We asked all the classes to collect plastic lids for us and when we had enough, we re-used them in a beautiful remaking of Van Gogh’s Country Road in Provence by Night. Each student had the sense that he/she is making a difference in our world. 

Guest speaker: We had one of our dads, who has a huge organic garden, come in and teach us about composting. We're eager to get the composting bin in our school garden up and running!

Hands-on Learning: And we're eager to plant seeds and have some school-fresh food before the end of the year! Can't wait to eat radishes, lettuce and peas! Yum!!

We will continue to talk about treasuring our treasures as we move on to our study of Native Americans. And hopefully we'll be lifelong conservationists, making treasuring our treasures a lifestyle that will keep our world beautiful for generations to come.