Make an Indian Tepee

It seems that a large percentage of Thanksgiving crafts focus on turkeys. Or pumpkins.

Which is fine.

However, the poor ol’ Indian tepee gets the short shrift sometimes.

So, let’s have our grandkids make an Indian tepee. They are really easy!

Here is a list of things that you’ll need:

• a brown grocery bag
• crayons
• scissors
• 3 sticks (can be skewers if you don’t have access to sticks)
• glue
• pencil
• string

Cut the brown paper grocery bag along one side.

Then, cut along all of the edges of the bottom to cut off the bottom. Lay the sack out flat on your counter top.

Cut a piece of string and tie it to the pencil just above where it is sharpened. Put the pencil at the top edge of the bag and hold it down.

With your other hand, hold down the string half way between the top and bottom edges of the sack. This makes the radius of the circle.

Now, keeping the string taut, draw a half circle from the top edge of the bag to the bottom edge.

Draw a half circle in the middle of your circle. This will be for the opening at the top of the tepee.

Now cut out your half circle. I neglected to take a picture what the circle looked like. Rats! But, you can see it in these pictures of my granddaughters coloring their tepees. (Click on them to enlarge the pictures to get a good look.)

We talked about what the Indians used to make their tepees (deer hides) and what designs the Indians would draw on them. (Sun, moon, stars, deer.)

When the girls were finished coloring them, I used a low-temperature glue gun to put glue along one straight edge of the circle. I quickly overlapped the other straight edge and pressed to make the glue stick to both sides.

I put a rubber band around 3 sticks so it was tight enough to hold them together but not too tight that I couldn’t manipulate the sticks.

My granddaughter put the sticks through the hole at the top of her tepee.

We separated the sticks a little bit so they weren’t all clumped together. Natalie was so proud of her tepee.

Good job!

Here are the finished tepees. We had a delightful time making them.