Elementary

Setting up invitations to play allows for the opportunity for students to begin to interact with the 3 sisters in different ways. We are having student begin to engage with food, but to consider the different uses of it, and understanding where it comes from.

Firstly, I would suggest considering the ways in which we can start to look at gratitude with the Ohenton Karihwatehkwen Activities (outlined here in the LBPSB Resource I've created).

This is a good way to start the school year, and then keep it ongoing throughout, and it will make a natural progression to these invitations.

Circle Time Video: Three Sisters Video with Ms. Erin

You can use this video to begin the conversation with the children about the 3-sisters before sending them into their invitations.

Invitation 1: Textured harvest play-dough. You can allow the students to explore the different seeds that come with the 3 sisters through this sensory activity. Ideas for Textured Harvest Play Dough

Invitation 2: Corn painting Art  This is another way to utilize something from the natural world talk about the textures, and the way it's used.

Invitation 3: Creating a 3-sisters garden out of art: You can have each of the students make one corn, one squash ( or pumpkin) and a couple of beans, and then you can place them together to make a wall display of their own 3-sisters garden intertwined.

Invitation 4: Beans: Using this resource from BC, you can develop some experience for students with feeling beans, and tasting beans. BC Lesson Graphic for Beans 

Invitation 5: Here are a bunch of different activities that you can do with squash: Squash Activities

At this level, it is a really good opportunity to get your students out walking in their school neighborhoods ( or even just their playgrounds) to begin to observe and interact with their natural world. A suggestion that I have seen in some elementary schools is to get signed permission in September from parents for the school year for their children to be able to go for walks with their class within a desginated km radius. Once you've got that signed, then you are ready to embark on any of the adventures connected to the trees.

Activity 1: Bringing students out to walk atleast once a week to begin observing the changes in the trees. Looking at the colours, observing the way they might change if there's a breeze, asking students to interact with trees, and building their relationships with them to understand the interconnected nature of humans and their natural surroundings can all take place on a regular, exploratory walk. Here are some other ideas for tree activities

Activity 2: After students have begun exploring the trees and are continously observing the trees in their areas, you can then do an activity with the students where they take stock of all of the ways that trees give to us. This activity comes with a 3-d model you can make with them ( I would adapt it to the colours they see now) and an anchor chart that you can use Tree Project Link here 

Activity 3:  You can read a book with the class about trees from different Indigenous perspectives ( like The Dancing Trees ) and have a discussion with the class during circle time about why it is so important to take care of the trees, working on ways together to show that if we take care of the trees, they will continue to take care of us. 

Youtube Video about Importance of Trees

Video 2 about Trees 

This is an excellent opportunity for the students to begin talking about food. You can do some work around what kinds of foods their families make, where the foods come from, what do balanced plates look like, or foods from different cultures. There are so many different entry points that are probably similar to the ways in which you've taught about food before.

Activity 1: Together as a class, you can begin to look at what kinds of foods are most popular at this time of the year ( fall time). We can begin to ask questions like why do we think that we eat these foods now? What are the different ways that we have seen them prepared and what are our favorites at this time of the year ( I personally love pumpkin pie and apples). You can create a display together about all of the foods which are present in this time of the year.

Activity 2: Indigenous people and food; this is an opportunity to talk about/teach about the different foods that exist within the province ( or the country) depending in your depth that have fed the original people since the beginning of time. Wild berries that grow, hunting animals, harvesting corn, beans and squash; there are many videos and stories that you could read with your class about the importance of foods from many different nations. 

Activity 3: Together, you can make traditional cornbread ( and sausages and gravy, which we often serve it with) with your class. It's a very simple recipe and will allow the opportunity for students to be able to taste the foods together that are basically combined from the harvest time right now.

Video from Oneida Cornbread

Mohawk Chef for Making Cornbread 

Tool kit on Canada Food Guide and Activities for Children 

Youtube video about Indigenous food 

The story of the cornhusk doll has a lot of different themes that can be explored or discussed with the classroom (self-fishness, responsibility, and gifts). You can work on the story with the students, and have many discussions about it (see youtube video)

A nice extension of this activity is that lots of people will be eating corn that will be in full harvest at the start of the school year, and that means that there will be lots of husks that can be collected to make cornhusk dolls. Here is a youtube video with instuctions, there are many different nations and techniques that you can find on youtube.

In the past, I received donations of material and bought simple things like yarn and  left the creativity of dressing them up to the students; it was amazing to see the ways in which they figured out how to dress them with minimal supplies

Extension: One of the samples in the pictures was from a learning centre in a NFSB school and they created a doll with different colour clothing to connect to the zones of regulation in which they had been working with the children. It was an excellet way to tie something cultural to something in their classroom routines that they were already working on.

At this level, we want to introduce stories from Indigenous nations about the three sisters ( as an entry point into the season) but then we can move into the discussion about other origin stories as they exist for Indigenous people. These stories often have a moral or some sort of theme that they teach about, and are often engaging with characters that are non-human but who carry human qualities. After reviewing some of the following story examples that will be listed below, I would encourage as the main activity at this level for students to write their own stories about how something came to be. In order to keep it related to the fall them, students can choose specifically themes related to harvest and fall ( What happens when an apple falls from the tree? OR Squirrel versus Corn); students will write short stories, mapping them out in story boards and then illustrating their origin stories of how something came to be in the natural world that include a lesson about life.

Extension: Students can discuss the differences between reading a story versus having someone tell the story. Students could compare a written version of a story ( Nanabozho in Anishnaabe traditions have some good samples of written and oral version of their stories available online). Students can reflect on the tone and impact of the different ways of engaging with stories.

Guest Speaker: This is a great opportunity to bring in an Indigenous guest speaker to share some stories with the students so that they can experience first hand experience with oral story telling; you can ask the guest speaker to focus specifically on stories related to the season of Fall.

Molly of Denali

Compilation of stories told from different Indigenous Nations

Haudenosaunee Three Sisters story 

Three Sisters Video 

Three Sisters Garden Picture Book 

Berries, particularly in the north where the climate is colder, can continue to be picked in the north during the fall. If we look at the Inuit season calendar ( see decolonial calendar), where we might consider September fall time, they are still considering it as a part of their summer time. Very interesting and this allows the opportunity for the children in grade 5 to consider different types of berries that are grown within Canada ( wild grown) and consider how to feed the populations of Indigneous nations within the province. I would begin with the stories or some lessons on how Indigenous people in the north have relationships with berries.

Activity 1: Students could do a profile of the characteristics of different berries that grow in Quebec, or you can extend to the whole country if you do not want repeats. Students can profile their colours, areas they grow, flavors, who picks them and other characteristics and then create a museum of berries by crafting 3-d versions of the berries and their plants ( types of berries in Quebec here 

Activity 2: Reading books to kindergarteners about berries, harvest and other Indigenous fall related materials ( see some of the book suggestions from the previous grades) is an opportunity for the students in grade 5 to practice their reading skills and to participate in the intergenerational knowledge sharing that happens in many Indigenous communities, including the experience of taking the children out on the land in the north to pick berries. It would be a solid way for the students to be able to actively participate in their learning and teaching of younger children. 

Extension: The students could write their own stories about harvest and/or berries to illustrate and then go to the kindergarteners to read their stories. They can also accompany the children to their "museum" so that they can see real replicas of the plants that they are reading about in their stories with the grade 5 buddy.

This video is definitely for a younger audience, and can be used as an example for having the 5th graders go to read to the K students. Let's go Harvest Video 

Berry Picking in the North

Berry Picking in Nunavut 

Here is a good opportunity to take the learning of science ( moon phases) and to connect it to cultural teachings as well as connecting to your lives.

Activity 1: There are so many resources out there that allow for students to track the moon, understand the different states of the moon as we see them, and also naming the phases. I suggest starting with that as a way to introduce the students to the ways in which the moon is perceived by humans through a western scientific lens ( examples here)

Activity 2: Connecting the moon phases to the teachings of the 13 moon calendar ( you can look at the resources from the decolonial calendar for a starting place). There are a number of ways you can engage with this. The Toronto Zoo has a very interesting Challenge for the 13 moons that follows Anisnaabe teachings. 

Another activity can be creating collages for each of the moons. Students can decide what sort of items ( in nature and man made) represent each of the 13 moons and can create a collage to represent that.

Activity 3:  This is a good opportunity to tie into sex ed and discuss the connections between a woman's period and the moon cycle. In many Indigenous communities, the women will refer to their period as moontime as is coincides with the same cycle as the moon; there are other teachings that you can engage in discussion with about the connections of periods and the moon as seen in the resource here . I would suggest jumping off from here to be able to do some work around the importance of women within our society, and then that can give you a chance to highlight women who've made contributions to the world, and to our individual lives, including the importance of Indigenous women. 

Another resource for naming the moons

Activities connecting moon and seasons