( week of Oct 5-9 )

This is the third week of our Native American Studies, and we will now begin to explore specific lifeways of the Chumash and Gabrielino. The last two weeks, we have learned about their general locations, activities, and customs. This week we will look more in-depth at their ceremonies and art. If you are joining us late, just jump in were ever you feel is appropriate for your learning process.

October 8^th is the first live online chat with the Trail Guides - please try to get your class online 10am - 12 noon, but the room is open starting at 8 am for students to talk to one another. Challenges will be posted during the chat that may require the students to find answers using the Camp Expedition Crate hands-on materials, or by using the online Camp web site. The test chat went very well on October 1^st, and we are looking forwards to a lively question and answer session this week.

Please prepare up to three main questions for the Trail Guides who stop into the Chat room. That will help them focus on each classroom for at least one main question to answer - hopefully more. If they were to receive a question from each student, it would be difficult to answer even a portion of them, and some classrooms might not receive any answers. By selecting one to three questions to post in the chat, you are assured more direct attention from the Trail Guides. We will do an additional chat with a representative from the Coast Band of the Chumash Nation as soon as scheduling permits.

A new list of Clan Face-the-Challenges has gone out to the listserv, and can be read on the web as well. Try to incorporate at least one of these activities with the class this week - and be sure to let us know how it goes ! We have a Camp Counselor out photographing classrooms as they undertake the hands-on / experiential activities that compliment the web resources. If you have a camera, take a picture and send it to us showing your class / clans in action - we’ll add it to the web site for your kids to enjoy. And let us know what, if any, of last weeks activities your class was able to undertake - or an other ones you have introduced in your classroom. Please post accomplishment reports to the camp-outpost-l listserv so all of the teachers can begin learning from one another about successful projects.

Be sure to check out Coyote’s Storytelling Place for some new stories - this time all Gabrielino and about that notorious ol’ Coyote. Watch him get in - and barely out - of some difficult situations, of his own fault of course !

If you are pondering on how to get the students into small groups for special projects - or even if you just want to pick a clan name for your class, see the new Clan Meeting Room online. It profiles each of the four Camp Clans - Clan of the Dolphin, Clan of the Island Fox, Clan of the Cormorant, and Clan of the White Shell Bead. These totems for each clan were chosen for specific characteristics with educational value. You can read the descriptions aloud to the class so they understand the reasoning behind the names / types of animals chosen to represent clans from the Channel Islands region. Special user ids and passwords have been given to each class for each clan for your use when needed.

Once the week closes, please respond to the questionnaire we will be sending to you via the camp-outpost-l listserv. Send your response as a private mail if you wish to camp@rain.org, or respond via the list.

This is our first opportunity to reward the students for their efforts as Trail Blazers. This study unit’s sticker / stamp for their passport is the dolphin. We will be sending out the answers to the questions in the passport via the camp-outpost-l listserv by mid week, so be ready to review their progress in answering the questions. If possible, the reward of the sticker to each student ( regardless of the number of questions they answered - it is their participation in general, not the quantity of answers being rewarded ) can be a fun ceremony - like a graduation from one study unit to the next. A rite of education passage in a way … and a lot easier than sitting on an ant hill covered with honey as a rite of passage, but THAT is another story …!