History Day At The Jeffers Petroglyphs

Another great day out at the Petroglyphs. The boys really enjoy going to these and they got to see and do some really neat things yesterday. Even if we did have to leave early and didn't get to make an arrowhead! The picture above is Jack, Jack, and Clay watching a short movie together in a viewing room they have.


Jack made some Tipi's :)



And the boys got to help assemble a tipi of their own. Clay helped work out some knots in the string holding the poles together.


Then they sorted out the poles.
Next the group worked together to lay out the canvas (would have been an animal hide long ago).
Victoria got the honors of raising the center poles, she did a mighty fine job!
Then they all got a chance to help put up more poles for support. Jack and Jack worked together here, but obviously my Jack petered out there at the end haha!
After all the poles were in place, they got to put up the canvas.
This is the last pic I got before we went back inside. It was neat and I'm glad the kids got the experience to see what it was like to do it. Shocking how fast and how often they did this years ago. And they were SO much larger too.

I think I liked the history of the winter count the best. It was something totally new to me and very interesting to learn about. A winter count is a pictorial history that the Dakota kept. One person was in charge of the history (basically) and they would pick a symbol to represent each year. Something that everyone would remember. Some of the events we talked about were the tribe getting small pox, a solar eclipse, a meteor shower, and so forth. Each year ran from the first snowfall to first snowfall.


The boys then were able to make their own drawing of something important that has happened in their lives. Jack drew of picture of him with his 2 teeth missing and him holding some cats. Because this was the year he lost his first teeth and the first time we have owned cats.
Clay drew a, um, chicken. Yeah, it looked exactly like a chicken. Haha. He did work very hard on it, I shouldn't joke.
Oliver and Alex also got to play a Native American game together. As best as 2 year olds can. It was very cute to see them interacting and playing so well together. They knew exactly what they were supposed to do.....we just have about 2 more years until their motor skills catch up :)