Reliving the first thanksgiving

What better time to introduce children to Native American history than the week before Thanksgiving?

That’s what kindergarten teachers at Circle View Elementary School thought. For the last week, morning and afternoon classes have been learning about Native Americans’ way of life through a variety of discussions and hands-on activities, fulfilling a social studies curriculum requirement for kindergarten. The teachers have come up with creative ways to meet the requirements, while getting students excited about the subject matter.

“It’s a great time to talk about how the Native Americans lived long ago,” said kindergarten teacher Alisa Lembke. “It’s helping them understand that they [the Native Americans] didn’t have the things we have now.”

The week of lessons culminated in Native American Day on Tuesday, when the kids wore headdresses, made their own butter, gathered cranberries from the yard to make sauce, planted corn and made miniature tepees out of construction paper.

The students received feathers made of construction paper the week before -- one for each question they got right -- and crafted their hats at home. The questions fulfilled another kindergarten curriculum requirement -- that students know basic information such as their full names, how to dial 911, their ages and their birth dates.

“They had to earn their feathers, just like the Native Americans,” Lembke said.

Native Americans did not have the alphabet used today, so Lembke’s students learned various symbols and how to draw them. They painted some of the symbols on a large tepee made of sticks and cloth.

“We’re doing what Indians used to do,” said 6-year-old Nathan Muckelrath as he used a small stone to crush corn -- an activity designed to teach students how Native Americans made corn products.

During the weekly journal-writing session on Tuesday morning, where students are allowed to write whatever’s on their minds, most of the kids wrote about the giant tepee they built in the center of the room and about Native Americans.

“We can write whatever we want,” said Dyllan McCord, 6. “We can write about Indians or tepees.... We’re going to learn about Indians all day long.”

The teachers also taught the children about the first Thanksgiving -- explaining how the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and how the Native Americans showed them how to plant corn. Teachers also explained how, after a time, the Pilgrims forgot they were the visitors. The used an analogy: “If someone came to your house and started playing with your toys as if they were theirs, you might be upset.”

Melissa Blasco, whose 6-year-old daughter McKenna is in Lembke’s class, volunteered to help out with Tuesday’s activities, making sure that every student had an opportunity to do each one.

“She’s been talking about it all week,” Blasco said of her daughter. “They’ve also been practicing their lines -- they have a play tomorrow for their Thanksgiving feast.”

All of the Circle View kindergarten classes rehearsed a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving, which they performed for parents and relatives on Wednesday.

* LINDSAY SANDHAM covers education. She can be reached at (714) 966-4625 or lindsay.sandham@latimes.com.

20051124iqdvm5knKENT TREPTOW / INDEPENDENT(LA)Kindergartners Paul Yousefian, left, Katie Conroy, Rachel Akiyoshi and McKenna Blasco plant corn kernels in cups Tuesday as they learn about Native American customs during Thanksgiving week activities at Circle View Elementary.