Trekking across The States - Arizona

Welcome to our adventure in Arizona. If you need your own passport to join us on our adventure, please click here. It was a bit of a higilty pigilty week this week as we had to travel to attend "Tractor Pap's" funeral....we didn't get everything done that I had planned - there was so much to cover and so many interesting things to learn about Arizona.

First of all we did a cut and paste activity that had a map of Arizona, the ridge-nosed rattlesnake and a cactus. I let Channing watercolor them this time since he does not enjoy coloring at all!

We then did a counting activity with rattlesnakes.

Here is a matching activity that we did.

I decided to focus on 2 native American Tribes from Arizona (although there are a lot more).....we studies the Apache tribe and the Navajo tribe. I don't have pictures of all the worksheets and activities that we did but we looked at their daily life, the clothes they wore, the houses they lived in and the foods they ate/hunted.

We learned that Apache woman gathered nuts, berries, corn and other fruits and vegetables.

We also learned that the Navajo tribe were farmers, hunters and gatherers. They hunted on horseback and grew beans, pumpkins, squash and other fruits and vegetable's. Sheep were very important to them because they used the wool for clothes and meat. Corn was also very important to them and they believed that supernatural beings called "corn people" protected they corn. They held special ceremonies to honor the "corn people".

An Apache legend says that a boy needs to race to the top of a mountain and down again before the sun rises to be fit enough to enter manhood. Based on this, I made a little game for Channing to play. The Apache boy starts at the red circle and the sun starts at the bottom of the squares. You need a dice (preferably a dice with only 1-3 on it). If Channing rolled a 2, the sun moved up 1 space, if he rolled a 1 or a 3, the Apache boy got to move that many spaces up the mountain....the aim is to get the boy up and down the mountain before the sun gets to the top of the squares! Channing had a blast with this game and it was great because he could play it by himself while I worked on dinner!

We also played some Apache games......... Toe Toss Stick and Foot Toss Ball (you can find the instructions of the download).

The Navajo tribe were known for their beautiful weaving. We tried our hand at weaving - Channing found this VERY hard........I think we'll do some more practice - I noticed that counting coconuts has a great weaving activity this month that we'll have to try.

We completed a mapping exercise where we had to look at a map of Arizona and find where all the places were and stick them in the correct place on the map....it was a little squashy, but we got hem all on.

We also did a bit of a study on the Sonoran Desert and the Saguaro Cactus. You'll find a page of facts about the Saguaro Cactus in the download but 2 interesting things we found out is that this particular cactus grows VERY slowly when it is young....it takes about 10 years for them to grow to be almost an inch tall......another interesting fact is that this cactus can hold a lot of water - 4/5th's of it's weight! I found a great website with lots of great facts!

We also studies some animals that live in the dessert like Bobcats, Collard Lizards, tarantulas, Gila Monsters, Western Diamond Back rattlesnakes and Kangaroo Rats...........we found out how each animal has something special about them them helps them survive in the dessert. We actually made a book out of our facts but I didn't take any pictures. You can find the information we used about each animal on the download. I found a lot of informations (along with pictures of each aniamls here.

The cute graphics for the "trekking" button are from Scrappin Doodles. Thank you Denyse for allowing me to use them!

Don't forget to check out Montessori Tidbits and Get down and get your hands dirty for some other awesome ideas on Arizona.

We're gearing up for our trek to Arkansas next week :-)