Family Fun - Native Crafts

While we continue on our journey leading up to Thanksgiving we are recreating certain lessons. Right now we are learning about the history of America and our Native descendants. Our family has Cherokee descendants so we are getting really involved in our learning with hands on fun. Each year we add a little something different to our learning.

Here are some fun family crafts to use with your family. Makes for great hands on learning.

Native Crafts: To note you can buy some native beads and jewels at Hobby Lobby to make necklaces as well as find other native kits to make other crafts. 

Totem Pole Craft

Dream Catchers

Native American Head-Band

Native Drum

Native American Leg Rattles

Native Vests

Various Native Crafts

Drawing Native Art


Various TeePee's

Native Teepee Diorama

Easy TeePee Craft

Medium Work - Mini TeePee

Teepee Craft



It is important to note that when you are making native head-dress, beaded jewelry, dream catcher and other color coordinated crafts -- That each color has meanings to our  natives. Be sure to check out some of the noted resources below so that you can understand what these colors represent and their meaning to our natives. 


Colors & Meanings

Tribal Colors & Meanings

Tribal Colors

Native Colors and Design Meanings

History of Native American Drawings

Each year we try to add a little craft to our collection, since we started homeschooling. Usually after so long we end up tossing our crafts because they get torn up or sometimes get lost. But one collection we take pride in and put away is our Native collections. I have a great grandmother and great grandfather descendant 3 generations back that is Cherokee  so our native learning is treasured. :)  Each year we learn about the native lifestyles: their clothing, food they eat, how they kept warm and their housing. We learned about the colors and their significant meanings, their weapons and some of our crafts have been related to our learnings. 

We have made: A Tomahawk, Moccasin shoes, we have our rabbit fur/skin, we made an arrow head necklace, dream catcher (which is now hanging along side two of our original tribal bought dream catchers) and my youngest wants to again make an other dream catcher. :) 

This year along with making an other dream catcher with my youngest daughter, my son will make a knife pouch, my middle daughter will make a "Proud Hunter Necklace," and I am going to attempt to make a Head Dress, (this will probably not meet my deadline, I need a few more feathers as I am making this from scratch to resemble one I found on the internet. It takes a lot of beads, feathers, time and patience.) Wish me luck.

I will post pictures hopefully by the end of next week. Enjoy the hands on fun and learning. Please do share with us what you are doing in your school day.