Children's Reading List: American Girl Kaya and Lapbook

Posted by My Heart Song

9/13/2011

It's official - we've begun reading through the American Girl books. We started with Kaya because she is the "first" American Girl chronologically (the setting for Kaya's life is 1764 in the Pacific Northwest) and she is a Native American.

This was a great series for my daughter. She loves to read, especially fiction. This series beautifully supplemented what we've been studying in school about Native American history, all the while entertaining my daughter with the fictional characters.

We made a lapbook for the Kaya series. All of those lapbooking printouts can be found here and are completely free. It's been a while since we made a lapbook and my daughter practically begged me to make this one, when I told her that I had free access to the basic materials. Above is the cover she made for the lapbook - her own artistry.

Here she is showing the inside of the lapbook - the first set of pages with mini-books focusing on describing what Kaya was like, what her housing was like, what her mother and father were like, some of Kaya's favorite things, and what life was generally like in 1764.

Then you can turn the page in the lapbook and here is the next set of mini-books. These focused on Kaya's horses, what changed in Kaya's life throughout the series, what conflict Kaya had with someone else in the books, and a map of the United States highlighting the parts of Oregon, Idaho and Washington where Kaya's Nez Perce tribe lived.

I've made my daughter this promise: we will read through all of the American Girl books as we study U.S. history and when we are done we will take a train ride to Chicago and go to the American Girl store together. She can't wait! I'm not sure if I should let her loose to just read all of the books quickly (which she would love to do and would finish them this fall) or make her wait until we go through each period of history so she better understands what is taking place in the books. I'd like for her to go the slower route, but we'll see.