I was using food coloring, and cornmeal, so of course I was expecting a gigantic mess. But my history class surprised me by doing really well with our art project today and keeping disaster to a non-existent minimum.
We learned about the Native Americans of the Southwest and Mesoamerican region today. The kids were great listeners today, and we covered the necessary educational material really quickly and glued some things into our notebooks. I try to do a little chart about each region, so the kids can see how the regions were similar and how they were different. I also try to find a few famous people from each region and talk about what they were famous for. And I like to put in a picture of how the tribes in each region dressed. Mostly I'm attempting to teach the kids that not all Native American's hunted buffalo and lived in tee-pees.
Our project this week was really fun. Medicine Men in the region used sand drawings to try and get bad spirits to go away. They did their drawings on the floors of homes, but we did ours on paper. :) I gave each kid a smallish card stock rectangle and had them lightly draw a picture of something in pencil. Then, using paint brushes, the would brush glue onto a small section of their picture. Next they sprinkled colored cornmeal over the top, and then shake it off again. The cornmeal would stick to the glued spots, but not to the dry spots. They could brush glue on another spot and use a different color of cornmeal, creating fun sand drawings.
1 comment:
Very cool. But I want to see their finished pictures!
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