native education

The kids and I attended a really cool class today, a free demonstration class to promote a spring-semester joint venture between the Monday Homeschool Class group and the children's museum where the classes are held. The class, called "Museum Explorers" will allow the kids access to materials and archives that are not on display to the general public. Today's demo class was about the native people of the area the museum is located, the Podunk tribe, and how they used the native wildlife.

Here, the Humanities Curator of the museum shows how the Podunks used deer antlers (in her left hand) to make a "flaking tool" (in her right hand). Basically they just cut off one of the antler tynes (those pointy things that stick up on the antler), and then they used it to shape...



...a piece of quartz (being a very common type of rock in this area), or other rock, into an arrowhead. She passed the antler, the flaking tool, the quartz, and a display of arrowheads found locally (many of them quartz) around the room so the kids (and us adults!) could get a close-up view and touch them.



Then she showed us some of the other objects the Podunks made from native materials -- a rattle made from a Box Turtle shell and decorated with fur and feathers, and a drum made from animal hides (deer, I assume) stretched over wood.




Zoo Boy gives the turtle shell rattle a shake. We also got to meet two live box turtles that live at the museum, and we got to compare their shells to those of other native turtle species.

I'm signing both the kids up for the class, and am excited that parents are welcome to attend as well. Zoo Boy gave the thumbs-up to the idea, saying "I think that would be a good class for me."

Me, too.