A Thanksgiving Idea

I hate teaching all of the Holidays, but some of the schools like it when we do so....Na. With my older grades 7th and 8th we have been discussing Native Americans and their lives. It has to be pretty basic because their language level is lower, but we can talk about basic things, like how they lived, how they live, and what kinds of things they did.

Bean Counting Game

If you were an Iroquis Native would you play games of chance?

The Iroquios loved these kinds of games. They would often bet on the outcome of any contest. One favorite was a game played with beans made of polished elk horn. Ther were about an inch in diameter and burned on one side to make them dark-colored. You'd put eight in a bowl and toss them. If six turned up the same color, you got two points. Less than six, no points; seven, four points; all the same color, twenty points. There was a pile of extra beans on the side. The winner received a bean for every point.
A similar game was played with six peach stones blackened on one side and shaken in a bowl. The peach stone game was often played on the last day of the Green Corn, Harvest, and New Year's Festivals.

First: I had the students read this out loud to work on their pronunciation.
Second: We discussed the reading to make sure all of us were understanding it.
Third: The students got into pairs and I handed out 8 beans and a sharpie to each group.
Fourth: They colored one side of each bean.
Fifth: I also handed out nuts and dried fruit as money to bet with, the students loved this. We had a great laugh on how teachers never have real money!!
Sixth: The students played the game until they ran out of "money".