More pics of pattern block rugs, weaving and dyeing

The synthesis of learning while mashing beets and dunking yarn

Over the course of the last six weeks, the girls have immersed themselves in learning about the Navajo.  The unit is designed to have lots of time, at the beginning, spent on collecting detailed facts about the Navajo.  Navajo have sheep.  Navajo live in hogans.  Navajo face different dangers.  They have deep respect for Mother Earth.  Navajo women make rugs.   In the second half of the unit, the work is organized so the girls can begin to synthesize and connect all the discrete facts. Collecting facts is easy; putting facts together is infinitely more fun.  The synthesizing and building connections is what makes a Springside education rich and more intellectually challenging.

Here’s how the synthesis looks around one aspect – rug making.

We talked about the symmetry of the Navajo rugs, and the girls practiced coloring in symmetrical rugs and building symmetrical rugs with the pattern blocks.  We watched movies of the Navajo women weaving, and the girls tried their own weavings both on small looms and on a large loom with store bought yarn and fabric.  We read stories about Navajo girls and grandmothers collecting plants to make dye, and we saw the same thing in bits of a PBS special we watched called The Seasons of a Navajo.

After a week of separate activities, the girls did the work themselves of dyeing yarn.  They chopped the beets and mashed the blackberries. They stirred the dye after it had cooked for a while.  Next, they took undyed natural sheep’s wool, which still smelled of the sheep, and put it in the pot.  The ah ha experience came when they pulled the yarn from the dye and saw the yarn had changed color.  And as they chopped and stirred and dyed, they began to imagine they were Navajo girls.  The conversation shifted to imaginative play where they were taking on new identities and synthesizing all the facts they had collected.  

“Let’s pretend we are Navajo girls, and our mother has been killed by a rattlesnake.”

“I can be the old grandmother who does the weaving.” 

“This is like our tree where we can hang our yarn to dry in the hot sun.”

“The Navajos don’t have pink in their rugs but we made pink yarn.”

The combination of actually doing the dyeing and pretending to take on a Navajo identity enabled them to learn more deeply because the intellectual activity of learning sticks better when the work takes place in the hands, mind and voice.  While stirring a pot of mashed beets and dunking yarn in might look like mucking about, this is where the synthesis of learning about Navajos happens.

The work of learning about the Navajo

Have you wondered what your daughter has been working on lately because very little has come home? Learning about the Navajo is learning through doing, creating, singing and eating, so there is little evidence to send home in the plastic envelope.  But take a look below and catch a glimpse of her recent experiences as she learns about and develops a respect for the Navajo people.  ~Kristin

A Navajo girl's backyard looks different than our backyard.

Mr. Yazzie is a tribal council member to the Navajo Nation.
He traveled from New Mexico to Springside just to teach us.
One of the things we learned from him is that a Navajo drumbeat is like a heartbeat.

Miss Crowell leads us in Navajo songs at our Kindergarten group sing.

Singing and drumming with Mr. Yazzie

Mr. Yazzie answers our questions about the Navajo.

Mr. Yazzie teaches us about the rainbow on the cradleboard.

To the Navajo, the family is like a circle.  Claire is taking a photo of some of the
people in her family circle - her grandparents.

Grandmothers are revered in the Navajo.
They are the weavers, and they own all the sheep.
Here's Sarah with her grandmom.

Ella and her grandmother - in a circle of love.

Corn is scared to the Navajo.
The girls are shucking their afternoon snack of corn on the cob.

Winslow is making a clay pot to hold corn pollen.

A Navajo cradleboard, Kindergarten style

The cradleboard made it easy for the Navajo to carry their babies on horses.
Amanda's baby doesn't have a horse, just Amanda's good care.

Navajos have deep reverence for Mother Earth.
Here's a Mother Earth doll, an earth ball and a clay bowl.

Navajo don't live in tipis.
Their homes are called hogans.
If you lift the flap of these hogans,  you will see a Navajo family inside.

We have wild deer, and the Navajo have wild horses.

Sheep are the important animal to the Navajo.
Gabrielle is making a sheep for the mural.

Cassie is adding decorations to her clay pot.

Julania and Sophie are starting their dreamcatchers.
Making dreamcatchers generated lots of conversations about bad dreams.

A finished dreamcatcher

The Navajo Nation has an official seal and so does the Kindergarten Nation.
On our seal are the things we hold as important to the Kindergarten Nation.

Funny Things

Here are a few of the funny things I've overheard lately.


I know what the S word is.  It's stupid.


Julia is moving to Dallas.  Will she get a horse?  I think she will because all little girls have horses in Texas.


Do you think Mary Poppins is a brave, smart girl?


My worst, favorite nightmare is...


Dad says bad words when he watches sports.


One child said this to me when I was not paying attention and answering what she was asking me:  I'm not hearing you, Mrs. Trueblood.  Talk louder.


The concept of "yesterday" often provokes some convoluted understandings of time. They did it yesterday and they did it after before yesterday.


Yesterday is not yesterday.  It's the other day.  


One of my all time favorite lines:  Be yourself or you will miss yourself.


One child said: It can make you fat.  
Her friend answered: Is that fat or phat with a ph? What kind of fat do you mean?


As one child walked in one morning, she sighed happily and said, "Today is going to be another day in paradise."  I completely agree each morning.  ~Kristin