This basket craft is great to do alongside many different Native American unit studies. Be sure and talk with children about the specific styles, and materials each culture would use. This activity is intended for children who might be too young to learn traditional weaving.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
This is a great craft to showcase the repetitive images in Tlingit artwork. Children make a small version of these amazing blankets which look fantastic in your classroom.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
Print one Tlingit Blanket template for each child.
Print up your blanket template. You will want to use black puff paint, or any other paint that you can squeeze in small lines.
Fold your template in half. Begin to draw your pattern with the paint, on one side of the blanket.
Try to make a design similar to the Tlingit blankets. (look online for image examples) Don't squeeze the paint to hard or you'll end up with blobs!
When you're finished with your design, fold your paper in half and press down.
Open your paper to reveal your symmetrical design. Lay aside to dry. When your design is dry, cut it out an glue it to a piece of butcher paper. Leaving plenty of room at the bottom.
Cut around the top and the edges of the butcher paper, but leave a long tail at the bottom.
Use your scissors to cut strips from the bottom of the paper up to the design on the blanket.
Use your scissors to cut strips from the bottom of the paper up to the design on the blanket.
While these hats are probably too small to wear, they still are fun to make! Children can decorate them and put them on display alongside all of their Northwest Native American Crafts.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
Choose a paper bowl and a paper cup that will work proportionately. The dollar store is a great place to pick these up!
Hot glue your paper cup to your bowl as shown in the photo. For younger children you can have these premade before the project.
Paint your potlach hats brown.
When your hats are dry, you can use a black marker to decorate them.
Show children examples of the repeating patterns in Tlingit art and encourage them to make similar markings.
More Design Ideas
When your Tlingit Hats are done, they make great displays for bulletin boards. You can staple them or even use sticky tack to adhear them to the board.
These igloos are not only fun to build, they are sweet to the taste as well! the time to build a layer and give the igloo time to dry. the exact way to build an igloo, but my children had a blast. Older children can certainly try to use the methods explained in the book, and the video.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
Print up this whale template on cardstock and cut out.
Stack your colored paper together and cut out in the shape of your animal. We are using the shape of a whale.
Keeping all of your paper stacked together, slowly cut your shape into different pieces.
You can cut your shapes any way you like. If your working with younger children, you can do this beforehand and just have the pieces ready for them.
Once you have your animal cut into the different pieces, you want to keep them stacked together just a bit so you can easily put your puzzle back together.
Using your animal template draw the same shape onto a piece of white paper
Slowly start adding your pieces on top of colors.
When ready, fill your animal with glue and put your pieces on alternating the colors.
You now have a beautiful representation of Tlingit art! These look great with black construction paper frames!
The Inuit tribes often carved beautiful shapes from soapstone. These shapes represented things they saw and experienced in daily life. There are many beautiful carvings of Arctic creatures as well ashuman forms depicting dailylife in the Arctic.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
Blend different colors of clay. We are using white and brown.
We want the brown parts to just streak up the clay a bit, not to blend into a tan color.
Add in some texture. We are using black pepper to get that freckled look to our clay
Smoosh, fold and kneed the clay mixing it in
Your clay is ready to use! Have older children form it into a block, and use simple tools to carve away at the clay. Younger children can just form the shapes of their clay.
Encourage children to make something that depicits life in the Arctic. That could be an animal, a tool, or even an Inuit family.
Let your clay harden overnight and display your arctic animals in your classroom.
These igloos are not only fun to build, they are sweet to the taste as well! the time to build a layer and give the igloo time to dry. the exact way to build an igloo, but my children had a blast. Older children can certainly try to use the methods explained in the book, and the video.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
Show children photos of Inuit snow goggles. Ask them to compare them to the types of goggles they have seen or even used before.
Print out the snow goggle template and cut a piece of felt to match
Hold the felt up to your child's head and mark where you will need to cut the slits for them to see. Use sharp scissors to cut.
Measure the size of the child's head, and tie your string on either end of the goggles.
Decorate! These look really neat just plain too, but we look for any excuse to break out the puffy paint!
Let your snow goggles dry, and then gear up for some igloo fort making fun! These are wonderful for pretend play.
These igloos are not only fun to build, they are sweet to the taste as well! the time to build a layer and give the igloo time to dry. the exact way to build an igloo, but my children had a blast. Older children can certainly try to use the methods explained in the book, and the video.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:
Art Project Tutorial:
Cover your cardboard with white paint. (If you're feeling extra crafty use Puffy Paint,
Pour your sugar cubes into a dish for easy access.
Draw out the shape of your igloo. Try to get it a circle, you can use a plate or upside down cup. Don't forget a doorway.
Put down a layer of glue along your igloo shape, and begin to build your igloo.
When you start your second layer you want to build a little bit inwards so that eventually you're igloo will come together.
Continue to build up and in, being careful. If you can stagger the cubes a bit it will be somewhat sturdier.
At some point you'll need to let your layers dry. When we got to the forth layer we decided to let it rest for the night.
As we added each additional layer, we let it dry overnight, using glue bottles and other household tools as props.
When dry you can add to your Arctic scene by filling up the cardboard area. Maybe making an Inuit family, an ice fishing hole, various animals outside....it's up to you!
We are wrapping up our learning about Northwest Native American tribes.
For our basic outline we are using Evan Moor History Pockets,
which is taking us through 8 different North American Tribes.
Our focus the last couple of weeks was the Tlingit tribe,
and we had many different crafts and activites to go with our lessons:
Tlingit Artwork
Potlach Hat
Plank House Craft
Totem Pole Carving Craft
Woven Basket Craft
Woven Blanket Craft
You’ll find photo instructions and tutorials for all these crafts
in our Native American Craft Section Here.
These would be great to go alongside our Inuit Crafts (Eskimo) as you study Northwest Native Americans.
*snicker
Black Pepper really did add some texture to our clay, and reminded me of the appearance of soapstone:
(I would have put more in, but eyes were starting to water)
We paired this craft with the book Missuk’s Snow Geese, which is about a little girl who wants to learn from her father, how to carve into soapstone.
My kiddos were a bit to young to do the traditional carving technique (we’ll be picking up bars of soap for this later in the week!) so we just molded our clay into shapes:
This was Bubba’s “Shark”….made me giggle how much it looks like a whale, but if he say’s it’s a shark….it’s a shark!
+ Awesome Craft
= Hours of Pretend Play!
My house is filled with little (blond) Inuit children making “igloos’ from my couch cushions!
Make your own? Here’s the Step By Step with a printable template!
Inuksuk!
Wondering what that means? Here’s a video….don’t feel bad for clicking it, I didn’t know either.
If anything you’ll at least learn how to pronounce it.
Here’s a few helpful books with some fantastic photos too:
Going for extra credit? Check it out….an Inuksuk on the 2010 Winter Olympics….
some discussion questions and some helpful links and ideas too!
These would look fantastic framed in black don’t you think?
We loved this book because a new animal is introduced for each page, and below the pictures children can see how the animals names are written in traditional Inukitut. At the back of the book there is a section where the author discusses his childhood encounters with each animal, while growing up in the Arctic. Bubba especially loved this part of the book, hearing about a young boy who had so many fantastic adventures.
My kiddos picked their favorite animal of the group and used a combination of watercolor, colored pencils, and pastels to complete their drawings.
We cut down the edges of the paintings, and glued them to our lapbooks for cover art. I then helped the children write the name of the animal in Inukitut next to their paintings:
If you can’t tell, Sissy(7) did “Killer Whales”, and Bubba(4) did “Arctic Char” (which are fish)
I think they turned out beautiful and they are super excited to fill them up with everything they are learning!
Here is a link to a tutorial with discussion questions for using this craft in your classroom.
Stay tuned for more Arctic Fun!
My kiddos have been so excited to learn about the Eskimos, and all the amazing creatures of the arctic.
We’re using Evan-Moor History Pockets as a basic guide for our studies on Native Americans
As well as Draw, Write, Now Book 4 (Animals of the Arctic)
And of course a slew of library books (Click Here for our picks)
We’ve already kicked off our year of learning so we’ve got some great projects to share with you!
Starting off with these fun Puffy Polar Bears:
We’ve even included a recipe for making your own Puffy Paint, and Texture Paint here!!
Very Simple, but quite beautiful results!
Stay tuned for more Arctic Fun!!!
(Psst….You did see our adorable Eskimo File Folder Game didn’t you?)
I am a Christian mother of four, with over 13-years experience homeschooling in Southern Oregon. The resources and products I create are designed to keep the prep to a minimum while also bringing a little educational fun to your classroom
