American Girl class-Kaya- week 6

We had another great class discussing Kaya, and we discussed the final book in the series! Next week we will begin discussing FELICITY!

Here are the highlights from our class:

My daughter's doll in her new Kaya dress...

I have a friend from our church that is part Pawnee Native American, (which is a different tribe from Kaya, she is from the Nez Perce tribe...)  and she came to show the girls a traditional dress and jewelry that she had made or been given. Her name is Mrs. Cheryl Brown, and she did a great job! She made most of her clothing, did the ribbon work on her skirt, made her fan with imitation eagle feathers, and her intricately beaded purse (which took 2-3 months to make!). She said she did not make her shawl, she bought it. Her necklace and earrings and moccasins were beautiful!!  She got several jewelry pieces which were silver from her aunt, who is a silversmith.

Our special guest, Mrs. Brown...

She had a cool jeweled/ metal piece down her back!

She explained about her fan...

She explained that they wore these shawls when they swayed and
danced and the tassels moved too!

Before she left, she sang "Amazing Grace" in Pawnee, it was so pretty! THANK YOU for coming, Mrs. Brown! She answered the girls' questions too! So fun to have a guest! :-D

 Then we enjoyed Corn Griddle Cakes for snack, you can find the recipe here.

Girls enjoying the Corn Griddle cakes -YUM!

 After snack, we talked about Salmon, since we didn't have a chance to do that last week. I gave the girls a page from the internet that talked more about salmon. You can find the page here.

You can find and download info about salmon here: http://library.stjosephsea.org/salmon.htm

Here is a pdf on salmon: http://www.bpa.gov/Corporate/KR/ed/reslist/journey.pdf

We also talked briefly about parfleches, which Kaya's sister was making in the book. Here is an info page about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parfleche

Girls making the fringe on their no-sew dresses!

 This was a very simple pattern that I made by looking online at my friend Jamin's posts about making dresses. I bought WAY too much fabric, but hopefully I can use it again! (I realized it on the way home from the fabric store, oops!)

Here is the "pattern": 

I cut each piece of fabric 15" X 22" and folded it in half (so it was 11"). Then each of the girls cut a hole in the top middle for the neck, approx 4" across with a small V in the middle of their own dress. They fringed the bottom on both sides, and a little (5-6 times) around the arms. We tied the dress around the waist with an 18" piece of hemp cord. I forgot the beads, but I was going to have each girl string 5 or 6 beads onto the hemp and tie knots on each side before they tied it in the back. It was a fun and easy craft!

Since we had extra time, I read some information about the Nez Perce tribe, found here.

more fringe-makers...

The group of girls with dolls in front!

Two more girls added in... cuties!

I loved seeing the dolls in their new, simple dresses! Not all of the girls have dolls or brought them, so I told them that they could put it on another doll or even a bear! :-D It was a fun class and I'm looking forward to changing gears and talking about Felicity next week!