Good morning! It’s a dreary day here, but we’ve had lots of excitement and culture over the past week. I had a Japanese art class in Belfast on Saturday, and we all went down to Dublin on Sunday. It was a great day spent with family; until the Christmas lights switch on (we didn’t go for that, but it happened to be that day, so we stayed for it), which was downright pandemonium and honestly very frightening to be there with small children. We’ll be sticking with the small town celebrations from now on! Now that we’re home things haven’t been any more quiet, and we’ll be sharing some of these activities with you over the coming week or two. What we really need now is some time to sit down and relax with a good book. One genre that I have found difficult to source are Canadian First Nations books. We love David Bouchard’s work (he was a teacher in my elementary school for a little while), but there are also many other authors. Today I’m sharing a selection of books that we either already have in our homeschool library, or are on our wish list. If there are any that you would recommend, please let me know in the comments as I’d love to have a larger collection for my children to enjoy.
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Canadian First Nations Books For Children
Each week a few of us put together a great selection of books on a given topic and bring them to you to help narrow down the choices for you, each of our hosts share different titles, so have a look around each of our posts for wider choice.
To make things even easier for you, I have provided Amazon links to these books for both my American and British readers (just click on the link and you’ll be automatically directed to your county’s Amazon store). Enjoy!
First Nations Arts and Crafts
More Than Moccasins: A Kid’s Activity Guide to Traditional North American Indian Life, although this book spans further than Canada, the crafts and activities are interesting and engaging. We have just started to use this book ourselves.
Inuit Art from Cape Dorset Coloring Book, Beautiful and simplistic Inuit art from Nunavut.
Stones, Bones and Stitches: Storytelling through Inuit Art, learn about the Inuit culture and history through photos, art, and sculpture.
Metis Books by David Bouchard
The Elders Are Watching, bringing the message of respect for the earth back to the youth of today. You can see my review of this book here.
Nokum Is My Teacher, a boy asks his Nokum (grandmother) a series of questions about life. This book comes with a CD of singing and drumming by Northern Cree. You can see my review of this book here.
Secret of Your Name, learn about what it means to be Metis in Canada. This includes a book, a CD with CD, with readings in English, French and Michif, as well as the Red River Jig.
First Nations Books For Children
The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish, The story of the 1913 Canadian Arctic expedition to explore the north.
Maple Moon, the legend of how a boy discovered maple syrup.
Christmas at Wapos Bay, set in my own home-province of Saskatchewan, three Cree children set out to learn about their culture and traditional ways and find an adventure.
Canadian First Nations Books For Older Children
The Winter People, historical fiction about how Saxso sees his village burned and his family taken hostage. Will he find a way to rescue them?
Shannen and the Dream for a School, 13-year-old Shannen takes on the Canadian government to provide a clean, heated, and healthy school to help enable First Nations children to succeed.
The Collected Works of Grey Owl, The Men of the Last Frontier, Pilgrims of the Wild, Sajo and the Beaver People. Though Grey Owl may not have been who he claimed, his passion for nature and conservation was true.
