This month our team designs the mid Summer and Fall program and we come up with several ideas. We decide to introduce our clients to our local native culture, and choose to highlight the Ohlone people, who inhabited the San Francisco Bay Area for hundreds of years. We want to bring a natural flow to our programming to create easy transitions in our decor and activities. We follow the thread of history with Missions and ranchers, who occupied our land after the native culture disappeared. All this fits into one large landscape on one of our display walls, allowing us to change it gradually with the themes.
The Ohlone
For information about the Ohlone I dive into my own library and search the Internet. I love reading the terrific and evocative descriptions by Malcolm Margolin of the daily life of the Ohlone, and the vivid illustrations of the people, the animals and the natural surroundings. I pay attention to finding reliable resource materials, and search for images of dwellings, artifacts and people.
Here are several activities that allow for different levels of participation:
- making a tule hut and boat with paper and raffia
- coloring an image of an Ohlone family in front of a tule hut
- coloring and cutting out animals and trees: bear, deer, fish, oaks and pines
- weaving a small basket
- looking at and discussing images of the Ohlone
The cutouts are used for the display, and slowely but surely the landscape comes alive!
The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, by Malcolm Margolin and Michael Harney, 25th Anniversary Edition
No comments:
Post a Comment