Native American Legends

This week we have been learning about Native American culture in 1st grade.  We have read several legends and done some fun art and writing activities to go along with them.

We read Arrow to the Sun which is a Pueblo tale about a Native American boy who is trying to find his father.  He has to face his fears by going through four kivas (the kiva of lightning, snakes, bees and lions) before he and his father are reunited. 

After we finished reading the story we wrote about something we are afraid of and made a class book.  

We read Knots on a Counting Rope about a blind Navajo Indian boy who likes to hear his grandfather retell the tale of his birth and how he was named.  Then we made a class book about what our Indian name would be.

We read Whale In the Sky which is a tale from the Northwest American Indians about totem poles.  Then we made our own totem poles by putting animals in ABC order and writing a tale of our own in our journal to go along with the totem pole we built.  

We read The Legend of Bluebonnet which is about a Native American girl who sacrifices her most prized possession to end her tribe’s suffering.  A few of us even shed a few tears while we were reading the story.  Then we made a class book by writing about what our most prized possession is and why.

Finally we read The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush this afternoon which is about an Indian boy named Little Gopher who is smaller than all of the other children in his tribe and not able to ride horses, run and shoot bows and arrows with them.  He finds out that he has a special talent when a Dream-Vision comes to him and we spends most of his life trying to paint a picture as pure as the night sky.  

We made and decorated our own pottery bowls from a paper sack and rolled up colorful paper to make paintbrushes like the ones Little Gopher used in the story.