Native American Pictographs

The fourth grade artists have been learning all about Native American symbols and pictographs in art & history. Understanding that a pictograph is a picture that represents a word or phrase, students looked deeply into their purpose in native American life and our lives as well. In their general education classrooms, students created a list of names that represented them and their character. Viewing many symbols throughout Native American culture, students were inspired to create pictographs/symbols to represent something that identifies a characteristic of their personality. Students also designed headbands using traditional Native American symbols that spoke to their character as well i.e. Girl, strength, love, powerful. Concluding their study, students discovered the purpose of the Dreamcatcher which was designed with a web to entangle bad dreams and filter through good dreams which would eventually be passed down the center of the dreamcatcher to the sleeping person. A giant 4th grade dream catcher was created for only good dreams! They thought about the dreams they like to put into the universe and expressed those dreams in the dreamcatcher study. The fun part about Native American art-making was being able to simultaneously create, chant, and sing to all of the Native American songs they were learning of music. Fourth-grade artists have been learning all about Native American symbols and pictographs in art & history. Understanding that a pictograph is a picture that represents a word or phrase, students looked deeply into their purpose in native American life and our lives as well. In their general education classrooms, students created their own native American names that represented them and their character. Viewing many symbols throughout Native American culture, students were inspired to create pictographs/symbols to represent their chosen names. Students also designed headbands using traditional Native American symbols that spoke to their character as well i.e. Girl, strength, love, powerful. Concluding their study, students discovered the purpose of the Dreamcatcher which was designed with a web to entangle bad dreams and filter through good dreams which would eventually be passed down the center of the dreamcatcher to the sleeping person. A giant 4th-grade dream catcher was created for only good dreams! They thought about the dreams they like to put into the universe and expressed those dreams in the dreamcatcher study. The fun part about Native American art-making was being able to simultaneously create, chant and sing to all of the Native American songs they were learning of music!