Teaching Trunks
Acorns, Sea, and Sage: Culture and Life of the Chumash and Tongva

Acorns, Sea and Sage is a hands-on Teaching Trunk based on the material culture of one of Southern California’s earliest residents, the Chumash. The trunk provides activities for storytelling, hands-on exploration of natural history specimens and artifacts with discussion of their probable uses, as well as comparisons between how the land provided for life 500 years ago and how it does so today. When the students relate their needs to those of some earlier inhabitants, they will discover commonalities of all people.

This trunk is extremely popular and all year long requires potential borrowers to be on our wait list. Please call the Members’ Loan Service to add your name to the list.

Inventory

Educator's Notebook
With background information, activities, vocabulary list, bibliography, and suggested field trips.

Books

• The Chumash People: Materials for Teachers and Students - Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Docent Project
• When the Animals Were People by Kay Sanger
• The Rainbow Bridge , A Chumash Legend adopted by Kerry Nechodom

Poster

• Tribal Areas of California

Artifacts

• Abalone shell
• Abalone shell tool
• Arrowheads
• Bay leaves
• Bone awl
• Bull roarer
• Clam shells
• Clapper stick
• Coast live oak acorns
• Coyote skin
• Deer antler
• Deer hide
• Deer skin (tanned)
• Deer-toe rattle
• Ground iron oxide minerals
• Mortar and pestle
• Obsidian
• Olive shells
• Pine nuts
• Chia seeds
• Rabbit skin
• Sage leaves
• Shark jaw
• Shark skin
• Shark vertebrae
• Sinew
• Soaproot brush
• Steatite/soapstone
• Stick dice (6)
• Stirring stick
• Tule reeds
• Walnut shell dice (6)