Games of the Eastern Woodlands

Our students have so much fun learning through experience that I try my best to come up with ways to make history come to life.  One of the better activities was the one in which we recreated games of the eastern woodlands.  If I were to do the lesson again, I would have the students create their own props, but for the sake of time I provided all of the materials.

GAME 1: RING AND PIN

Ring and Pin is a popular game in many cultures.  Among Native American tribes different materials were used to create the game that involves throwing a ring in the air and spearing it by the attached pin.  Here are some facts you might want to share with your class which I took from this website: Beyond the Chalkboard

The Wampanoag used deer toe bones. 

The Iroquois use horn and call the game  “spearing moose.”

The Penobscot in Maine used a piece of leather for their ring.

The Mohave in Arizona used slices of squash.

The Paiute of Nevada used a rabbit skull.

The Narragansett in Rhode Island carved a piece of wood.

The Karok from Northern California used dried salmon vertebra.

The Digueno from Southern California used acorn caps.

The Klamath people in Washington used salmon bones.

These images came from the web link above.

In our version, I found paper bowls and cut the bottom out of them.  For fun, I decorated the edges with Eastern Woodland patterns of flowers and leaves and vines.  I attached the bowl to a piece of string, and the string to an unsharpened pencil.  These were simply the tools I had lying around the classroom, but I'm sure you could get more creative.  

A fun take home assignment would be to have children come up with their own way of recreating this game and bringing them in to share with the class.  To play, I partnered students up so that one person was tossing and one person was counting successful “hits”.  I timed, each side for a minute and we made it a little competition and added up points.

Success! 

GAME 2: HOOP AND STICK

Okay.  There may be a a fancier name for this game, but this is what we called it since these are the tools we used to recreate it.  In the past, many games were played in order to help children prepare the skills necessary for adulthood.  Boys engaged in activities that would help sharpen their hunting and fishing skills.  I found pictures online to help me show this to the kids.  

To create the hoop and stick game I took two hula-hoops and crisscrossed strings over the center (anchoring them still with rubber bands) to make holes.  I had wooden dowels lying around my room from some other project and these were perfect for “spears”.  

Supplies you'll need

To play the game, two kids stood a short distance apart and rolled the hoop back and forth to one another.  The other kids lined up and took turns trying to throw the dowel through the holes of the moving hoop.  If they got it through, they scored a point for their team! For fun, we had another student act as the catcher who ran back and forth retrieving the spears to keep the game moving. 

It really was this simple!
I love how serious the "catcher" in the background is!  

When the Native American played, each hole represented an animal.
If you made into a smaller hole you earned more points.
That was too advanced for us though =)

It was such a fun day!