Rock Art

Title: Rock Art

Context: 1st/2nd Grade (6-8 days) Social Studies/Art
This lesson combines Native American History and art. It also relates to our mountain unit.

Objectives:
By the end of this unit student will be able to show their understanding of Native American Rock Art by producing their own art and listing vocabulary related to rock art.
Students will show their creativity by creating a work of art.

Benchmarks:

Language Arts
• Understand, learn, and use new vocabulary that is introduced and taught directly through orally read stories and informational text as well as student read stories and informational text.

Art
• Distinguish works of art from different societies, time periods, and cultures.
• Create, present, and perform works of art.


Preparation:
• Collect the book "Native American Rock Art Messages from the Past," pictures of local rock art, card stock, black brown and white tempera paint, natural colored crayons (brown, orange, gray), brown butcher paper, paint brushes and other drawing tools (sticks, leaves, hands, and craft sticks).

Lesson Introduction: I will explain that we are going to learn about Native American Rock Art and will read the introduction from the book "Native American Rock Art."

Learning Activities:

• Each day we will read one of the six chapters from the book discussing the vocabulary and themes. We will also look at photographs of local rock art.

• Petro glyphs: (this takes two or three days)
1. Students will each cover a piece of card stock with a brown or orange crayon. The color should be completely solid, there should be no paper showing underneath. Have them write their names on the back.
2. Students paint over the crayon with tempera paint, brown or black, making sure it contrasts with the crayons.
3. When the paint is dry, the students take a craft stick and “carve” their petro glyph. Have them refer to pictures we looked at to get ideas. You may want to have them plan out their drawings on plain paper first.

• Pictographs:
1. With brown, white, and black paint, paint designs using paint brushes as well as other materials like sticks, pine needles, and fingers.
We did our pictograph together on two large pieces of brown butcher paper. This could also be done individually on brown or gray construction paper.

Closure:
• We will hang our pictographs on the wall and have a final discussion about what we have learned.