Settlers in North America; from Pilgrims to Colonists {1600-1740}

We just briefly touched on the Pilgrims, the Iroquois and the other woodland tribes and the 13 colonies this week. We will be going into this in more detail at the beginning of next year's studies right after Labor Day, but I wanted to look at them briefly now so they can see them in context to the other things going on in the world during this time period. Here are some of the resources we used this week and some that we will be using in the fall.

Draw Write Now, Book 3: Native Americans, North America, Pilgrims (drawing, handwriting, copywork)

Homeschool Journey's Renaissance History Portfolio

Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

Pilgrim and Indians puppets (paper dolls) from Pilgrims

Pilgrims; Complete Theme Unit Developed in Cooperation with Pilgrim Hall Museum
Pilgrim and Indian (paper dolls) puppets



The boys each pretended to be either an Indian or a Pilgrim and had appropriate cards with which to made trades.

Trading Game

Made Pasta Wampum

and weaved it into a Wampum Belt

History Pockets: Native Americans, Grades 1-3

Read Books:
North American Indians

The Very First Americans
Sarah Morton's Day

Tapenum's Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy In Pilgrim Times

The Landing of the Pilgrims (Landmark Books)

Mayflower 1620: A New Look at a Pilgrim Voyage

. . . If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620
Mary Geddy's Day: Colonial Girl in Williamsburg

Colonial Hornbook
Notebooking Pages

free Paper Indian Houses

free 17th Century Lapbook
If You Lived with the Iroquois Lapbook

Virtual Field Trip to Plimoth Plantation

Played Games:

The Voyage of the Mayflower Game

Made for Trade
Dutch Blitz


Projects:
Painting Pennsylvania Dutch style

Olive Oil Lamp

Handkerchief Doll

Paper Tin Landerns

Dipping Candles

Grinding Corn and Making Muffins

Pomanders

Using Plants to Dye Cloth

Quill Pen

Field Trips

St. Mary's City, Maryland

Londontowne, Maryland

Monocan, Virginia

Plimoth Plantation, Mass.

Review sheet that coorelates a timeline with a map.
Students glue down arrows with the names of the first three settlements in America between when they were established with where they were located.

The Seminole Indians (1770-1842)

We are going to be studying Native Americans/Indians this year, but instead of learning about many different tribes all at once, I have decided to stretch it out and study them throughout the year. We started with the Seminole Indians this week.

 The Seminole people were once part of the Creek tribe. In the late 1700's, the Lower Creeks began to migrate into Florida to evade the dominance of the Upper Creeks. The Lower Creeks then became known as the Seminoles as the word mean "wanderer." During the colonial years, the Seminole were on good terms with both the Spanish and the British. In 1784, the treaty ending the American Revolutionary War transferred British rule of Florida to Spain. The Spanish Empire's decline enabled the Seminole to settle more deeply into Florida until 1842, when the US forced the majority of Seminoles to move from Florida to the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) after the Second Seminole War.

They wore brightly colored striped clothing with long sleeves.

Making friendship bracelets in the bright colors the Seminoles used might be a fun project to do.

The women wore many beaded necklaces. Stringing beads for necklaces would also be a fun project to do.

The lived in wall-less houses with palmetto leaf roofs and a raised platform for the floor called Chickees. The cooking was done outside of the house. They slept in hammocks. The raised floor and bed helped to keep people dry and to prevent attack from animals such as the alligator. We used the pocket on the Seminole Indians from Evan Moore's History Pockets: American Indians.

Their most important festival was the Green Corn Dance in which people from many villages gathered to dance, play games, eat food and possibly a naming ceremony.

Dancing with the Indians is a great first person book about celebrating with the Seminole Indian tribe in the 1930's once the Seminole's were moved from Florida to Oklahoma.

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Early Explorers and Settlers in North America {1607-1650}

from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

1565: Spain's settlement at Saint Augustine

King Philip II of Spain sponsored a settlement in Florida (flower). Mendndez, the admiral, first sighted land on August 28, the feast day of Augustine of Hippo. They came ashore at the Timucuan village of Seloy, located at the present site of the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, and in honor of this day he named the area Augustine or St. Augustine. The Native Americans were filled with awe and curiosity at the enormous galleons and unfamiliar Spanish culture.  Surprisingly, Menendez did not receive orders, nor did he personally desire, to eradicate them. Spanish men married native women and adopted the Timucuan diet and methods of food preparation.  The Spanish missionaries, in turn, taught the Timucuans European farming, cattle raising, carpentry, weaving, and the Spanish language; speaking, reading and writing. By 1700, the Timucuan population had been reduced to just 1000 mostly through the introduction of European diseases.

 In 1703 the British with the Indian tribes of the Creek, Catawba, and Yuchi began killing and enslaving hundreds of the Timucua. By the time the United States acquired Florida in 1821, only five or fewer Timucua remained. They became extinct as a people.

 

Little diorama made from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

1585: Raleigh's Roanoke Colony fails
Raleigh received a land grant from Queen Elizabeth I to create the first English settlement in America. They stayed a year and built a fort, but then the friendly relationship with local Indians turned hostile. In 1587 Raleigh sent more men to Roanoke but when they arrived there was  no sign of the settlers who had come before. Raleighn sailed home for supplies for the settlers but was delayed and when he returned, he again discovered all the settlers were gone. The only clue to what happened to them was the word CROATOAN carved on a tree.  Croatoan was the name of a friendly tribe and of an island about 50 miles away. The lost colony was never found.

This is a great book. The illustrations are wonderful and it gives all the facts but lets the reader make their own conclusions.

from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

1607 Jamestown, Virginia founded
King James I granted the Virgina Company the right to found a settlement in Virginia. The first few months were very difficult, as they battled malaria, starvation and Indian attacks. Despite this, the settlement was a success as the first English settlement with the help of Chief Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas.

Jamestown Fort Craft from About.com

To create this Jamestown scene they used a variety of craft supplies:

Pop-cycle sticks

Brown wood stain/Acrylic Paints

Hot glue & glue gun

Small pieces of Pine tree

Dirt

Sticks

Styrofoam

This is a beautiful book that tells some new information that they have concluded from the evidence of the archeological dig at Jamestown. Very interesting.

On June 2, 1609, the Sea Venture set sail from England for Jamestown as part of the third supply ship. On July 24, the fleet ran into a strong storm in the Caribbean, and the ships fought the storm for three days, were separated, eventually shipwrecking.  Months later the stranded colonists successfully sailed to Jamestown in two boats they constructed. They were just in time to save the dying colony. That amazing story returned to England and inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

The Aztecs (1300-1500)

We have been studying the Aztec Empire all week.  I read to the little boys from Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. We are also using the Aztec unit that we had left to do from the History Pockets Ancient Civilizations book. My boys do not like to color, so this was not a favorite activity, but variety is nice all around. In this unit is a Aztec calendar to put together and color.

There is also puppets of an Aztec man and woman to color, and some vocabulary words with pictures for them to fill in the definitions.

The best in-depth book on the Aztecs (Incans and Mayans, too) for children is made by the owner of Sonlight Curriculum, John Holtzman, Incans, Aztecs and Mayans. It gives an in-depth account of these Empires, explaining how the thought and what they did without condemning the behaviors of either the Aztecs or the Conquistadors who conquered them in 1521.

Hernan Cortes
1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century.

from A Pilgrim's Heart

A Pilgrim's Heart has wonderful timelines and lapbook pieces for the Aztec and Incan Empires.
We also completed some related map activities.

Interactive 3D Maps: American History

Another activity that would be great to do is a drawing of an Aztec warrior.
Lesson plans can be found at Deep Space Sparkle.
More Resources for older students at Academia Celestia.
Or, this Aztec File Folder book at That Artist Woman

Aztec Cocoa from Budget Bytes

Source: thatartistwoman.org via Phyllis on Pinterest

Incans (1100-1500) and Quipus

We are studying the Incans this week. The Incans lived in a small mountain kingdom around the city of Cuzco but in 1438 their ruler, Pachacuti began conquering the peoples of the area, creating an empire that stretched along most of the Pacific Coast. Even though they did not have wheels or metal tools they built an amazing cities from stone. The Incan Empire was very organized and everyone had a specific task to do. To make sure the Empire ran smoothly, officials kept records on knotted cords called quipus. We decided to play a game with tying knots that I saw on Love 2 Learn 2day, but we did it slightly differently. 

A couple of my sons are having some problems with the fact that you read a number from left-to-right, but do computations from right-to-left. I have to vary the ways I present place value to keep interest and to have a new way of seeing a concept. I thought I would make a model of a quipus and use that as a new way of looking at place value. For this activity we used a thin dowel (a wooden skewer) and some multi-colored yarn.  My youngest rolled a six-sided die and I would  tie that amount of knots in the yarn at that colored section, and then continue down to the next section. We then made a sheet with matching colors to represent the different place values. The top section (yellow) was the thousands place, the next section (green) was the hundreds place, the next section (purple) was the tens place and lastly, the red section was the ones place. They then needed to figured out what numbers were represented on the yarn.

We then used some plastic tiles from Right Start math to turn the numbers into the direction we are used to seeing them.

They are nice because they have the zero place holders which you can cover up with other tiles to form the numbers.

This was a lot of manipulation of numbers and yet still keeping the concept of place value.

Then we got the idea of making one to use as a calendar. We debated for a time on whether to begin with the month, as we write the date or with the day because it was the smallest unit of measure. My husband was in favor of the day first as that is the way he uses it in computer programming. In the end, however, we decided on month first since we could use it for writing the date on school work.. We will be adding one each day to the days strand, and also to the months strand as each month passes.
Other projects can be found in this book-

We also colored maps of where the Incan Empire was and the conquistador who conquerored them.
A Pilgrim's Heart has wonderful notebook pages for the Aztecs, Incans and the Spanish Conquest.

Francico Pizarro
A Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire, and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of the Republic of Peru.