Once upon a time I found the story "How Grandmother Spider Stole the Sun", in a book titled Keeper's of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children by Michael J. Caduto & Joseph Bruchac. The story is an old Muskogee (Creek) legend that explained how the sun and light came to the animals and people. When I first started using this story, I used the necklace pictured below to tell the story and then the kids would make their own necklace afterwords for the art project.
However, there are more characters in the story than the ones on the necklace and I wanted to include them as well. Unfortunately, that would have made the necklace too crowded - so I decided that I should make the story into a flannel board, I just haven't gotten around to it until now. The other characters I want to include are an opossum and a fox, who just like the buzzard, go through a physical change during the story, and with a flannel board I can show the kids that change. For example, the second animal to try and steal a part of the sun is Possum, who thinks she can hide the piece of sun she takes in her bushy tail - - "Wait!?" you say, "Opossum don't have bushy tails, the have skinny little tails that are bare." Why yes they do - Now; you see the piece of sun Possum took burned all the hair off her tail and that is why to this day opossums have bare tails. So my plan is to have an opossum with a bushy tail, but the bushy tail will just be some felt over the real tail, which I can easily remove. I plan to do the same thing with Buzzard, have a section of felt feathers over his red head and neck which I can remove; and with Fox, I will have a section that I can add to show how his mouth was burned.
This may sound like a bunch of gooble-dee-gook until you read the story, which should then hopefully shed some light on my ramblings above. If you are unable to locate the book through a library, the full text is at Google Books and the story is on pages 49 & 50.
Enjoy and I promise next week I will be more coherent :)
4 comments:
I totally get it - and it sounds like a perfect use for flannel. I love stories that are used to explain why things are the way they are today... that sounds like a fun one!
I *love* the idea of a story necklace craft! I am so incorporating that, somehow.
I learned this to tell one year loved it--that little aha! moment (like when the bushy tail comes off the possum) is so much fun to watch on the kids' faces. Great idea to adapt to a flannelboard, the transformations will be a good visual. Please show us the pieces when you get them made!
I love the idea of a story necklace! What a fun idea. This will make a great flannel, it sounds like such a fun story to tell.
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