About This Lesson
The Earliest Americans introduces students to some of the native peoples who populated America long before the arrival of European explorers. Students learn that the earliest Americans arrived in North America as early as thirty thousand years ago along the Pacific Coast, while others traveled from Asia across Beringia, the land bridge, and that over time, native peoples migrated throughout the North American continent and into Central and South America. Students explore how these early peoples adapted to their environments and developed unique cultures. They focus on the Inuit, the Ancestral Pueblo and Mound Builders, and specific Native American peoples of the American Southwest, Southeast, and Eastern Woodlands.
This unit includes a Student Reader, Timeline Image Cards, and Teacher Guide, providing Guided Reading Supports and the following Additional Activities: creating a Navajo blanket; viewing Navajo sand paintings and kachina dolls; virtual field trips to the Ice Age, the ancestral Pueblo and the Hopewell Culture Gallery; domain vocabulary exercises; and a Unit Assessment.
