The Birchbark House

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Timing by the Season”

In this activity, students will connect their learning to the theme of Anishinabe Spirituality by constructing timelines of family rituals by season.

Omakayas’s family marks time by changes in nature. With the onset of summer, they build the birchbark house. With the onset of fall, they prepare the corn harvest for winter. Think about the ways in which your family’s rituals are tied to the seasons. Think beyond holidays to rituals such as gardening, raking leaves, cleaning the home, winterizing pipes or plants, and so on.

• In a four-column chart labeled by seasons, list your family’s rituals, big and small.
• Then, construct an illustrated, annotated timeline of a year in the life of your family.
• Illustrations may be hand drawn, cut from magazines, or found on the internet.
• Annotations may be complete sentences or fragments.
• The timeline itself may move linearly from left to right, but it might also be circular or some other shape.

Add your timeline to a classroom display titled “A Year in Our Lives.”

Teaching Suggestion: You might give students the option of using a free online timeline maker.