Native American Indians

Lesson #7: The Hand Game

This third grade class at Spanish Oaks Elementary has begun learning about different kids of cultures. One group of people they have been learning about is the Native American Indians. During this lesson we learned more about the culture of Native American Indians and played a traditional Native American Indian game.

Native American Indians: An Umbrella Term

First I explained to the class how the term "Native American Indian" is a very broad term and there are many more specific classifications underneath that term. I related this to shoes. Shoes are a very broad term. There are all sorts of different kinds of shoes--sneakers, sandals, boots, flip flops, heels, flats, slippers, and so forth. There are also many different kinds of Native American Indians--Navajo, Ute, Apache, Cherokee, Inuit, and so forth. I brought with me a library book about Native American Indians. This book listed some of these different tribes and showed a map with where these different tribes lived in North America--along with what kind of houses each of these different tribes built to live in. The book also contained illustrations of a Native American Indian's culture and lifestyle. There were pages about clothing, housing, hunting/farming, and transportation (canoe, horses, and dogsled). We looked at these pictures as a class and talked about some of these differences between our culture and their culture.

Native American Indians Played Games Too!

We also discussed as a class games that we like to play in our culture (such as monopoly). Well, the Native American Indians also played games--just different ones than we play now. I showed them a picture in the library book of some Native American playing cards and some sport (kind of like lacrosse) that some people were playing. The kids next got the opportunity to play a traditional Native American Indian game--called the Hand Game (also called the stick game). This game was played among Indians in the plateau region. I taught the game to the class (with some revisions in the rules that allowed every student to play at once and also that made the game simpler) and then we played it several times. This game was also played with musical accompaniment. Players would sing and also play the drums as part of the game. I taught the class a simple children's song that we would use for our musical accompaniment. The rules are as follows.

The Hand Game

1. The class is divided into two teams (Team 1 & Team 2). Each team forms two rows, facing inwards. Each row had about 5 students. The inside rows sit on the floor while the outside rows stand.

2. The first student in line (in the standing row) is the Team Hider. When it is their team's turn, the Team Hider will be given a button by the teacher. The Team Hider will then walk up and down their team's row and will hide the button in one of their teammate's hands (all the students standing have their hands outstretched behind their backs). 

3. The first student in line in the standing row on the other team is the Team Guesser. While the other Team Hider is hiding the button, the Team Guesser stands in the center and watches. After the button has been hidden, the Team Guesser has two guesses as to which student is holding the button. If the Team Guesser guesses correctly, that button goes into their team bowl (they score a point). If the Team Guesser is unable to locate the button after the two guesses, the other team puts the button in their own team bowl and gets a point themselves.

4. The Team Hider does have a time limit for hiding the button. The students who are standing are sing the children's song we just learned as a class. The inside rows of students who are sitting on the floor each had a different drum and a mallet. They drummed the beat of the song while the other students sang. The Team Hider had until the end of the song to hide the button.

5. Whichever team had the most buttons in their bowl when it was time to stop playing (which was decided by me) won!

The kids had a fun time playing this game. Halfway through the game, the kids playing the instruments switched with the kids who were standing. So everyone got the chance to play an instrument and almost everyone got the chance to be either the Team Hider or the Team Guesser. It was a fun time! Team 1 won. :)

Wrap-Up

I wrapped up the lesson by explaining that while Native American Indians back in the day did not have access to Monopoly, air conditioning, cars, plumbing, etc. But there are many Native American Indians today who do have access to those things. They do not necessarily wear tribal clothes all the times, and they're pretty similar to us. We just might differ in religious beliefs. I then showed the class some pictures. My Grandma and Grandpa Smith served an LDS mission at the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. My Grandma was kind enough to send me some pictures of the people there, and I showed two of these pictures to the class--one picture of a Native American Indian boy and one of a Native American Indian girl. When I showed them to the class, one girl exclaimed out loud exactly what I'd hoped they would understand. She said, "They look just like us!" This was a fun lesson where the class got to explore more of Native American Indian culture, got to learn a simple song, play the beat with a mallet on a drum, and got to play a fun Native American Indian game!

Latin American Instrument-ing!

Lesson #6: Welcome, Senor Don Gato!

Yesterday I took another trip to Spanish Oaks Elementary! The kids are beginning to learn about cultures: what a culture is, what makes up a culture, and so forth. Some specific cultures they'll be learning about include the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Native American Indians. I knew that the kids loved playing instruments in one of our previous lessons, so I decided to organize our class time around instruments used in Latin America.

Story Time:

First I began by reading a children's story about a cat named Senor Don Gato. I explained that Senor Don Gato lives somewhere in Latin America--probably Mexico. The story follows Don Gato as he receives a love letter from a lady cat, then falls off a roof and breaks all sorts of bones, dies, is carried away to the cemetery, but then upon smelling fish, comes back to life! After reading the story, we pointed out things as a class that are different in this culture than in our culture (clothes, houses, food market).

Next I explained that other cultures listen to different kinds of music and use different instruments in that music. In our American culture we hear lots of piano, drums, and guitar (to name a few) in our music. Then I brought out some old Aztec instruments--an ayoyote (like a rattle) and an ocarina (a little instrument you blow in). There also was an African djembe (d rum). I then compared these to some other instruments I had brought from the BYU Elementary music library--a hand drum, claves, recorders, maracas, guiros, and cowbells. I explained that instruments evolve over time through different cultures and time periods--an example being of how the invention of the organ later led to the harpsichord which then led to the piano. So these really old Aztec instruments (among plenty of other instruments) over time have evolved to instruments like these!

Soundtrack for Don Gato:

Then we created a little soundtrack for just one of the segments of the story--when Don Gato is so excited about his love letter that he falls off the roof and breaks his ribs, his bones, and his whiskers! I wrote out this portion of the book on the white board. The kids had instruments at their desks and helped to decide when each instrument would play while the poem was being read. We created a kind of composition using different symbols above the text to represent different instruments would play (and sometimes if the instruments would play loudly, slowly, quickly, etc). 

Don Gato is a Song Too:

This little story isn't just a poem in a book. It's also a song--a ballad to be exact (a song that has many verses that repeats over and over to tell a story). I showed the class the last page in the storybook--which shows the written notation and sang it for the class. Then I pulled up a YouTube instrumental recording of the song and explained the students would be playing their instruments along with the recording (while I sang--all the recordings I found with singing were either creepy or annoying). First we practiced playing together as a class (they play when I clap). They didn't know, but we clapped a half note pulse, then a quarter note pulse, and then a quick clump of three eighth notes at the end of each phrase. The recording plays all six verses and the kids had to watch me each verse to see which rhythm we were going to do for which verse. We did the whole song once, switched instruments, and then did it again! The kids got pretty good at following me and enjoyed getting to experiment with these Latin American instruments!

Link to Don Gato Recording (this is the slower version)