Our Native American Unit would certainly not be complete without a tee pee. We’ve been talking a lot about which resources the Native Americans in the Plains would have had (bison skin, sticks, etc.) and what they wouldn’t have (store-bought paint, cotton fabric, etc.). We attempted to make our little tee pee with as many natural resources as possible.
Since bison skin is rare in our parts, we opted for an old sheet. It was a little short so I would recommend 10 ft (~3.5 yards) of 60 inch fabric. Layout the fabric and cut like this.
We were fortunate enough to have leftover branches from last year’s garden structures.
We chose three to make a tripod to start our tee pee.
They crushed,
We used some yarn we had laying around to secure the top.
Then we dug little divets in the ground to keep the tripod from sliding.
We headed to the other pile of sticks in our backyard to look for some smaller branches to fill out our tee pee frame.
To decorate our tee pee, we attempted to make natural paint or dye. Each child chose something from our yard we thought would work. They found charcoal, raspberries, and beets.
We used this recipe to make a milk-based paint.
We crushed,
cut,
stirred,
and food processed.
The charcoal and beet paints made brilliant colors. I think the raspberry paint would’ve been darker if we had used more raspberries.
Either way, the kids had a fabulous time decorating their third of the tee pee.
After the paint dried, we wrapped the fabric around the frame and secured it with more string through three holes we poked at the top.
It’s smaller than I envisioned originally but large enough for the kids to sit inside and play a board game.
Head to http://pinterest.com/search/?q=tee+pee for other really cute tee pee inspiration.
Fun! I want to come to one of your lessons!