Homes for Native Nations

Comparison of different native groups focuses on shelters.

• 1.

  Define the word native. Name and list all the native nations, in your own country or another, that you have heard about. Confirm and expand this list by researching the first peoples who first lived in the country where you live. Make maps and notes with Crayola® Colored Pencils.

• 2.

  In small groups, choose four nations from the list. Study the homes in which these people lived. How did their homes look? Of what were they were built? At what time of year were they lived in? Were these homes permanent or temporary? Where were they placed in relation to the landscape or to each other? How large (or small) were they? Record your findings.

• 3.

  Find out what people and/or animals lived inside these native homes. Explain what you mean by family. Does this include grandparents, aunts and uncles, or cousins? Or did only one gender or one age live together?

• 4.

  Divide a large piece of construction paper into four sections, one on top of another. With Crayola Crayons, illustrate four different native shelters using the information you found about each group. Label each section with the preferred name of the native group.

• 5.

  What is the same about these four shelters? What is different? What influences may have caused these differences? Compare the shelters you drew with those completed by other groups.

Benefits

• Students identify and research different native groups, in their own or another country. They recognize that all native groups are not the same and each has unique features.
• Children compare and contrast the types of shelters in which these different groups lived.
• Students create a visual presentation of their comparative study, showing four different types of native shelters.

Adaptations

• Compare and contrast other attributes of native nations, such as foods, farming, clothing, festivals, languages, migration patterns, or music and dance.
• Older students study where traces of the earliest people have been found and map out migration routes of early native groups.
• Research contemporary as well as historical information about native peoples in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Africa, and other areas of the world. How have their lives changed? How have they stayed the same?