Buffalo Hide Stories

For this lesson, I got to co-teach this to the class with a classmate.  We started out the lesson by having the students listen/watch a recording of the Tommy dePaola's book The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. We discussed with the students the kind of things that Little Gopher saw and painted in the story.  The students were shown four different watercolor techniques and had a chance to practice them.  They then chose one of the techniques to use to paint their sunset as the background of the project.  Before applying the watercolor, the students were to draw stilts or something to hold up their buffalo hide with brown crayon.  While their paint was drying, the students were to come up with Native American symbols to represent something that has happened in their life.  This would be similar to the stories that were painted onto buffalo and deer hides by the Native Americans. Before the class period, we cut up, wet, and crumped paper bags that the students later used as their buffalo hide. On the paper bag, the students were to write their story using at least six symbols. Once all parts were glued together, the students were to write a summary of their story on the back of their rubric before handing it in.  

As an extension activity, I would have the students complete a full story about their symbols.  They could share these with their classmates and work on their composition and storytelling.  The students could even be assigned an important event in history and have them represent it using the Native American symbols.  

Our bulletin board