This week, we celebrated a birthday, welcomed a guest educator to give us a more in-depth experience with the Ohlone culture, Claire came and visited with her baby, Mariah continued our study of planting and talked of its uses, we did the Hour of Code (although the kids want more than just an hour…), and we learned about snow crystals in Super Science and Art!

Before we launch into a recap of the week, we wanted to remind you that we have a Celebration of Learning on Friday, 12/18 from 8:30 – 10:00am.  The Temescalians have been working hard on their expository essays about what they’re thankful for.  (Yes, we know it’s past Thanksgiving, but we can be thankful at all times of the year!)  After we share in small groups, and give appreciations, we hope to share some treats that we’ve prepared for you and sing some holiday songs.  If you are musically inclined, let us know and we’ll get you some of the sheet music beforehand so that you can help lead us in this endeavor to bring holiday cheer!  Musical or not, we invite you all to partake and hear what your Temescalians are thankful for!

At this point of the year, we shift from our science focus of plants to learn more about the Ohlone people as they lived long ago.  We have already gone to the Oakland Museum of California and seen artifacts.  This week, we invited a guest educator, Keith Gutierrez, to come in and give us a hands-on experience with the Ohlone culture.  He talked about the roles of women & men, how they got their food, and celebrations that they had.
The Ohlone people were people who lived along the coast of the Bay Area.  They lived in the area that spanned from Berkeley all the way to Monterey.  The Spaniards called them the Coastanoans, but the remaining descendants prefer “Ohlone” as it comes from their language.  The Ohlone did not wear very much clothing during the warmer months because they did not need to.  The ladies wore a skirt that had tule woven in the front and a deerskin tucked in the back.  During special occasions, she would wear strings of shells to signify beauty and social status.  She also used an animal fur wrap. The men would wear a deerskin wrapped around their waist, shell necklaces, and on special occasions, wear an animal head on their heads.  The Ohlone people believed that the coyote, eagle, and humming bird participated in their creation story.  Women were had tattoos on their chins and throats to indicate her lineage.  This helped the Ohlone to keep track of whom they were partnering up with.

Keith introducing himself and giving a brief history of the Ohlone people.

A picture of what an Ohlone village looked like from long ago.

On special occasions, women would wear a woven tule skirt, deerskin on the back, animal wrap, and shell necklaces.

Men, on special occasions, would dress to represent one of the important animals in their folklore: coyote, eagle, or hummingbird. They also thought that the bear had special powers.

Keith talked about what each day would involve: the hunting, gathering, and preparation of food.  Common assumptions of why women didn’t hunt are that they’re weaker, they’re not as able, but this is not what the Ohlone believed.  Often, it took more work to gather the acorns, nuts, berries, and other foods that they would eat.  Because they were constantly moving and gathering, women were often stronger than their male counterparts.  Instead, Ohlone beliefs barred women from hunting because they thought that those who give life cannot take life.  So, women were tasked with gathering food.  The Ohlone people were hunters and gatherers.  They did not plant crops, even though they did return to certain areas in different seasons to gather what that area had to offer.  The main food source for the Ohlone was acorns.  But they also ate buckeyes, soap root, nuts, roots, and berries as well.  Ohlone women would weave baskets out of willow switches and carry it with a strap across their foreheads so that both of their hands were free to gather.  They would store all of the acorns they found for a few months before they were dry enough to crack open and grind into acorn flour.  Using hot stones heated in fire, acorn mush would be prepared and eaten daily.  The Ohlone did not waste anything and might use cracked acorn shells to make beads.  We had a chance to hear and sing a chant that the Ohlone women would sing as they ground acorns.  Keith also gave us the opportunity to eat some acorn flour.  “It tastes like nuts!”  “I don’t like it.” “It tastes like cheerios!  You’ll like it!”

With a basket balanced by a strap across her head, an Ohlone girl would begin to help gather food starting at 13.

It was hard work to gather, but as they became more accustomed to the work, it became easier.

Soap root had many uses. It could be turned into a brush by mashing the bulb of the root into a paste and coating a portion of the roots into a handle. It could also be used to bathe. The lather on the surface of water would block the oxygen from the fish below and they would look consciousness and float to the surface.

You could also eat soap root.

Soap root brush.

Tasting acorn flour.

The Ohlone prepared the acorn flour by filtering it through layers of leaves and baskets to take the tannins out of the flour.

Acorn flour.

The Ohlone would heat up rocks.

Using two long sticks, they’d pick up the stone, dip it in water to rinse off the ash, and then place it into a tightly woven basket to heat and cook a mixture of acorn flour and water.

They used a round utensil to stir the hot rock around and take it out when it had cooled.

A Temescalian trying to pick up the “hot” rock.

Videos of Ohlone food preparation:
An Ohlone chant that could have been sung while grinding acorns.

Moving a heated rock from the fire into a basket to cook a acorn flour and water to make acorn mush, a staple to the Ohlone diet.

Starting a fire was hard work for the Ohlone people.  Once it was started, they would try to keep it going to have one less thing to worry about.  Their method was using the friction from two sticks to start a fire.  Later, when bows were introduced, they used a bow drill and stick to start a fire.  A Temescalian helped Keith with this process, and as we all saw, it was hard work to make it happen, but it did!

The piece of wood on the floor was called the hearth. A stone on top of the stick was called a cap.

Once the hearth was heated up, you would brush those embers into some tinder and dry grass and gently blow on it.

At first there was just a lot of smoke…

But eventually, we had fire!

A video of trying to make fire with a bow drill.

Children would follow their adult counterparts to prepare them for when they became adults.  In the Ohlone culture, you were considered an adult when you turned 13 years old.  Until then, the girls would stay with the women and learn how to weave baskets to carry food, how to prepare food, the best places to find food, and songs and stories.  The boys would follow the men in the village and learn how to make traps, weave baskets, fashion tools, and learn stories.  One of the games boys would have involved a willow switch fashioned into a hoop that they would roll along the ground.  The boys used a stick to try and throw it through the hoop.  If it went through, you “killed” the animal.  If you hit the side of the hoop, you “injured it.”

We learned a little more about the different tools that were used.  They used an atlatl to help them extend the length of a person’s reach and gave their spear thrust considerable boost.  The Ohlone men would prepare themselves for a hunt by going into a sweat lodge to sweat out all of their human scent.  They would sit, prepare their tools, share stories, and take dips in a nearby body of water.  After they had finished, they would rinse off and rub leaves over their bodies to cover their human scent. The Ohlone man would wear a deer headdress, bend over at the waist, and use his bow and arrows as “legs”.  In this hunched position, Ohlone men would stalk their prey of deer and tule elk.  They used conical baskets to trap both birds and fish.  Once the animal was in, it would not be able to turn around and get out.

Demonstrating how an atlatl would be used with a spear.

A quail caught in a conical basket trap.

A duck decoy’s base was made of tule.

would be covered in rabbit fur or duck feathers and pulled along by a string. As it was pulled, its hinged head would move up and down and simulate a real duck’s movements.

An arrow would have a detachable arrowhead. It took a long time to shape each arrow and this allowed Ohlone hunters to keep their arrows for longer.

Bows were made of yew tree wood.

Hunters stalked their prey in a bent over position to blend in with the environment.

We had some time to make our own face paint by rubbing ordinary wet rocks together, playing a game called Staves, and using a pump drill to bore holes into wood.

Men were the jewelers of the village and would bore holes into shells.

They would make necklaces that could be traded with inland nations for resources like obsidian.

Staves is played like dice. There are two sides to each stave. If you have all six one way, you get 2 points. You get one point if 3 are face up and 3 are face down.

Using wet rocks, we found that ordinary rocks held a lot of different pigment!

As they checked themselves out, we snapped a few pictures of them.

In math, we continued our work with multiplication.  We used the basis of arrays to help Temescalians understand the idea of multiplication.  If there is an array of 3 rows with 4 dots in each row, then you could write 3 x 4 and find that you have 12 dots.  This is the same thing as thinking that you have 3 groups of 4 dots.  We use Five Minute Frenzies to help the Temescalians keep track of which math facts they need to work on, and which ones they’ve already mastered!  In the two times we’ve already done it, they have already shown a growth of how many math facts they know!
We also used an hour of our math time to do the Hour of Code.  This program gives you a task that you need to program your character to do.  While we may not be doing it in Java, this is the basis and foundation for what coding is.  The Temescalians were enthralled by the program and many wanted to do more than just an hour of coding!  We wanted the grown ups to have an opportunity to try it out so we brought out the computers during Family Reading on Friday too.

Introductory video that showed President Obama trying to code!

We got stickers when we finished our hour of code!

On Family Reading on Friday, we gave coding another shot!

Mariah came back to visit us and spoke more about the scientific names for each part of a seed.  We also talked about probability of seeds sprouting, and for our class, we had quite a few calengula seeds sprout!  (Thanks to the recent rain!)

Claire came in with her baby for a visit, and we were so excited to see her!  She is 15 weeks old, and at 17 lbs, she is at the 95th percentile for weight!  She can roll from her side to her back, and is starting to vocalize and coo.  She loves seeing lights and the glass doorknobs at home.  She will vocalize whenever Claire sings, and she is starting to smile and chortle.  She may not like tummy time too much, but she is starting to raise her head on her own!  She loves to stand, but since she can’t really bear her own weight, she has what Claire calls a James Brown kind of dance as she wiggles and jiggles while supported and trying to stand on her toes.  We can’t wait for her next visit so that we can watch her grow and develop!

We had a birthday celebration for a Temescalian on her birthday!  It was lovely to be able to celebrate on her actual birthdate and share appreciations and ask her questions about her younger self!

We finished this week with our super science and art time!  We learned more about snow crystals.  Did you know that they are always 6 sided/pointed?  This is because of the structure of a water molecule and how they bond together.  There are star shaped, plate shaped, and column shaped snow crystals.  Their shape all depends on the temperature and amount of moisture that it is exposed to as it is formed.  When it exits a cloud, it stops growing.  There is so much to learn about these wonders.  We made pipe cleaner stars with Julianne and put them in a Borax and hot water mixture.  We hope that they will grow over the weekend!  Here is a link to a Borax crystal recipe that you can do again or on your own!

We have a week full of activities ahead of us!  We hope to see you on Friday morning for our celebration of learning!

Please be sure to check the bar on the right for upcoming events!

Finally, we have shifted from our Spanish intensive block schedule to our Music intensive block schedule.  For the most part, our schedule is similar, but we have Music thrice and P.E. is on Mondays and Thursdays.

*8:50 – 9:30 Assembly on 1st Friday/Buddies on 3rd Friday