Kindergarten Art

We had to jump ahead a week in the humanities schedule to begin work on our Native American People unit. One of our favorite traditional projects in Kindergarten art is the construction of our paper tipi sculptures. The students were presented with several visual aids of traditional tipis and we talked about the culture of the Native Americans. We reviewed symbols, what they meant and how they were used. Each student drew over 20 symbols, carefully controlling the lines made and following the traditional pictographs. They began to think of how to put symbols together to either tell a story or give a direction. The next step will be to transfer the symbols and designs on brown paper and begin to construct their sculpture. (My children both created a tipi during their studies at The Ratner School and we still display them even though they are now in high school and college!)