(This is the approach that stands behind Rose Honey’s curriculum, “Discovering Our Relationship with Water.”)
The Honoring Tribal Legacies curriculum follows a place-based multiliteracies design approach. This type of framework incorporates learning about “place” using physical and cognitive activities that focus on our visual, auditory, tactile, spatial, smell/taste, movement/gestural, linguistic, and spiritual abilities. Learning episodes provide a variety of learning experiences including watching and listening to video footage of water flowing, singing and listening to songs about water, listening to words spoken in new languages, looking at different spatial perspectives of a place or event, feeling water in various forms, envisioning movement of water and thinking of water as a living entity that the children can have a relationship with.
In addition to this multiliteracy approach, each learning episode also offers a multilevel approach with a suggested activity focused on the “emerging learner,“ and the “advanced learner.” These suggestions are meant to help teachers think about how to teach for different ability levels in their classrooms, instead of teaching to age levels. It also offers teachers the flexibility to use this curriculum to teach older children including kindergarten and up into first grade. One way to create a nice learning environment that is focused on water is to play music while students are working on projects or during snack time. There are many water-focused songs available online. Here are a few to try:
- Water (Paisley, 2010)
- Rainy Mood (Rainy Mood, 2012)
- A Song Made Out of Water (Huang, 2013)
- Native American Water Healing Song (MacIntyre, 2010)
- The Water Song (Incredible String Band, 2011)
- Have you Ever Seen the Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival, 2007)
- Red Rain (Gabriel, 2009)
- Let it Rain (Clapton, 2011)