Lovely Little Story Pots

Admit it, we all love a good story, especially when it comes from that adorable little one in your class that is missing their front teeth and is jumping up and down talking a mile a minute! Here is your perfect opportunity to channel that creative energy into something productive that also ties in with cross curricular requirements. Native American Story Pots! 

Third grade begins their journey in writing creative stories, as well as some history on Native Americans. I combined these two elements to have my kiddies make story pots. We looked at some examples of Hopi and Navajo Indian Pottery and symbols, discussed what we saw and what the symbols stand for, then began to draw our own.

 I created a worksheet with as many Hopi Tribal symbols as I could that were commonly found on wall art and in other artworks and copied them onto a worksheet paper. They learned how to use the symbols to write a sentence visually, then wrote it out to distinguish the difference.  This skill carries over in many ways with their general education classes, and it is really well received by classroom teachers.You can see it scattered around the table on the above picture. 

Two pots with creative symbol stories are cut and pasted.

Once our two pots are completed, colored & cut, we make a simple background for them. Some of course got really creative! They were required to make a table top and a shadow, but the wall could be anything they wanted. Some did wallpaper, others "chandeliers" others added a person & hand holding the pots; truly it was up to them. 

The last and final step was adding in their sentence. Most classes I had them draw lines on the bottom of the page to write their favorite story sentence in. Others wrote it on the top if their pots were to big. Either way, it was a great success! 

"The Man Sang a Song to the Water!"