Art for Sign of the Beaver

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Home : 2001 : April : 26

Art for Sign of the Beaver
By Angie

When I taught this book, we studied Native Americans at the same time and we made "Skin Stories". We studied the symbols that NA used for telling stories and them made dictionaries of the terms. Then we took brown paper and wrote a story in black on the paper using the symbols. We then burned the paper to give it an authentic look (you could also just tear). We also talked about the decorations that Matt could use for the cabin and picked wild flowers, dried them and made arrangements out of them. As part of the culminating performance, we found paint recipes made from berries and grass (natural stuff), and painted a NA mural to represent what happened in the story. Hope I helped!!!