Haffenreffer Museum, Eskimos Presentation

Playing games is one way the Eskimo people practice hunting skills!
Here we are playing a ring toss game!

Brr! It's cold up here in the Arctic Circle.  We started our week with Mrs. Silvia from the Haffenreffer Museum who taught us all about the Eskimos and brought lots of awesome artifacts for us to see, touch, and try out!  Here's what we did and learned!  Mrs. Silvia brought in animal skins and horns / antler to show us.  She brought furs of a snow rabbit, black bear, caribou, lynx, red fox, weasel, and a mink.  We also saw horns and antlers from walruses, caribou, and a narwhal.  She brought in some pieces of whale baleen as well, which is soft and flexible inside a whale, but hardens up when it hits the air.  Eskimos never wasted any part of the animals they hunted!

Mrs. Silvia also brought some traditional Eskimo knives, such as the ulu.  We learned that when young hunters catch their first seal, they are supposed to give it as a gift to the oldest woman in the village as a sign of respect.  Then, she usually gives a new pair of boots as a thank you!  We learned that Eskimos built their houses underground, not out of ice (igloos) and they had to crawl through a tunnel to get into their houses!  The Eskimo mothers carried their babies in their hoods of their coats because it's warmer in their hoods and it keeps the babies close to their mothers.  Every year there is a dog sled race in the Arctic called the Iditarod.  We learned that the dogs (like huskies and akeatas) have to wear snow booties on their paws so they don't get cuts on their paws as they run 1,000 miles on the Arctic ice!  During the sled race and during hunting, Eskimos wore special goggles that had little slits in the lenses to keep snow out of their eyes.  We'll be making our own Arctic goggles this week!

Now, Native Americans in the Arctic are allowed to hunt just one whale a year since many whales are endangered species.  We learned about the tundra and how there are no trees that can grow due to the permafrost (frozen ground).  This makes it challenging to live in the Arctic Circle because you cannot use wood as a building material unless you find driftwood.  We learned about (and tried on) overdresses, which are dresses that are worn over your clothes and coat to keep your clothing clean.  Usually girls wear overdresses - check out the photos below!  The Eskimos played a lot of different games to help with their strength, hand / eye coordination, and stamina for hunting.  Some of games included a ring toss (Mrs. Silvia, Caroline, and Justin were the only ones who got a ring on the post!), a stick catching game (which  was harder than it looked), Eskimo yo-yo (which is different than regular yo-yos), hot potato, and a "humming" toy!

Check out the photos below and THANK YOU to the PCC for another amazing enrichment program!