Native American party for 8-year-old My daughter is really into Kaya, the American Girl character, but we couldn't find any officially sanctioned Kaya party stuff, so we decided to do a party on Native Americans in general. We did a little reading so we could tell the other girls about Indians.  First, my daughter made the invitation and in it she told the guests to wear Native American attire if they had any. When they arrived, they each received an arrowhead necklace, suede pouch, and bead bracelet (all from Oriental Trading). They each made a headband by using markers to draw on a piece of 1-inch-wide elastic. I stuck feathers into the elastic by using an Xacto knife to cut two little slits and weaving a feather into those slits (this held the feathers upright and turned out to be very secure also). We just used safety pins to hold the ends together for a "custom fit."  [One thing I wish I had done was to have some coloring pages of Indian things for the kids who finished their activities early.] After the headbands, we each girl made a dreamcatcher from a kit (again from Oriental Trading). Making the dreamcatcher exactly as instructed turned out to be challenging, so we improvised a bit & my husband and I helped too. (After they were done, I put a little glue in strategic spots to hold it all together, and it dried while we went on with the party.) It turns out the Native Americans played cat's cradle, so the next activity was learning that.  I found some helpful sites online with instructions since my skills were rusty, but it turned out my husband remembered all the steps and was very good at it so he was in charge of this time while I prepared dinner.  He taught them some string figures too. Dinner consisted of elk on flat bread (ground elk meat with taco seasoning on tortillas—we also had beef for those who were squeamish); corn; "roots" (carrots and green onions); and berries (strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries).  I got some cheap fur & some cheap Indian-print fabric to spread out on the floor for the girls to sit on while eating.  We had a good old, ordinary chocolate cake.  After opening presents it turned out we were out of time, but we had a couple of other things planned if case we'd needed some filler—face painting (with face crayons) and top spinning (we read that Native Americans used to play a game with a top with a pointer on it—they'd ask a question, such as "Who will get married first," then spin the top to see who would be the lucky person). I think all the girls had a great time and my daughter will certainly remember it.