How Difficult Is It to Put Up a Tepee? (And Gaining Respect in the Process)

Engineering challenge: Put up a tepee with 15 sticks

We started off this challenge with 15 poles 

and a length of "sinew" (string).

After several minutes of attempts, there was a cacophony of "I need help, I need help!" heard around the room. Even as the students helped one another they were miserably unable to make a solid stand of poles for their buffalo hide coverings. 

(A perfect lesson in perseverance and grit - two of our favorite words at Seabury!)

So we got some advice from David and Charlotte Yue 

in their book, The Tipi A Center of Native American Life

The advice was to tie either three or four (depending on the tribe) poles together and make a sturdy tripod or quadpod (new word). Then lay the other poles on top of the solid foundation. 

We tried this and it worked much better. 

But it was still quite difficult. 

We then stretched our buffalo hide coverings over our poles.

We attached them using the modern day convenience called a glue gun.

And voila! Our Native American village, complete with bushes, canoes, fire pits, travoises, and drying racks. We even had an assortment of plains animals that visited our village.

  

 We learned (and experienced through our model making) that the Plains Native Americans were dependent on buffalo for survival. 

Here we are  determining what parts of the buffalo were used for food, clothing, shelter, tools, etc. 

The Natives Americans had great respect for nature as we learned in this book, The Buffalo Are Back by Jean Craighead George. The book was perfect for tying together some of our various science and social studies topics this year: conservation, plants, animals and Native Americans. 

Here's what the Scholastic website says about it:

The buffalo, an American icon once nearly extinct, has made a comeback. This stirring picture book tells the dramatic story, following bison from the Plains Indians to the cowboys, Teddy Roosevelt to the Dust Bowl, and from the brink of extinction to the majestic herds that now roam our national parks. Paired with gorgeous paintings by landscape artist Wendell Minor, Jean Craighead George's engaging text will inspire a new generation to understand and protect nature's delicate balance.

We learned a lot about the word respect as we studied Native Americans and as we did this project.

From Merriam-Webster:

• high or special regard :  esteem 
• an act of giving particular attention :  consideration

1. They were skilled, innovative engineers, able to build stable, weatherproof, transportable, beautiful homes from the natural resources available. We discovered this is not as easy as it looks and we esteem them!
2. The Native Americans gave great attention and consideration to the world in which they lived, taking only what they needed and not wasting any of what they took. They held nature in high esteem as we can see by their ways of life. We hope to live in such a way that we, too, show great respect to the world we live in.