Native American Heritage Month is a great opportunity to celebrate the diverse histories, traditions, & cultures of the indigenous people. Playing tribute to rich ancestry through reading stories is a great way to honor & learn more about the Native American people.
Here are two ways we have been exploring Native American Heritage month through these invitations that are inspired all by books.
1. Invitation to Explore Berries: The Caldecott honor book Berry Song by Michaela Goade, is about a girl & her grandmother gathering gifts from the earth. Salmon from the stream, herring eggs from the ocean, & in the forest, a world of berries. Brimming with joy and gratitude, in every step of their journey, they forge a deeper kinship with both the earth and the generations that came before. After reading the story we set out an invitation to eat berries + jams with berries to deepen the children's own relationship with the food, where it came from, & how it tastes.
2. Invitation to Paint Life: The book Remember by US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo + Caldecott Medalist Michaela Goade is another beautiful book to read during Native American Heritage Month. The book invites children to reflect on the wonder of the world around them, their family, heritage, nature, & how we are all connected. The timeless poem is paired with magnificent paintings which makes for a book that is a true celebration of life & our human role within it. Since the book is full of vivid illustrations of the earth & the wonder of nature we integrated the literacy experience by inviting the children to paint water through resist art with watercolors and salt & oil pastel designs.
Whenever we set invitations that are related to books, it makes the concept explorations even more motivating, engaging, and appealing to the children. The pictures and words impart a lot of meaning but the invitations further help in the child's ability to retain & comprehend the information, extend the children's inquiry learning process, all while making the magic of a story come to life.
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