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Rainbow in a Rug

Rainbow in a Rug

How do the Navajo weave such beautiful rugs? Create your own replica Navajo weaving with Crayola® Rainbow Twistables™.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Read The Goat in the Rug or a similar book that describes the Navajo weaving process. Invite students to discuss the steps, tools, and skills involved in weaving a Navajo rug.

  • Step 2

    Organize a variety of text and electronic resources for students, working in small groups. Navajo rugs and blankets come in many different designs. They often use geometric patterns and themes from nature. Some pattern names are Tree of Life, Crystal Rug, Teec Nos Pos, and Yei and Yeibachai. Groups research these and other styles. Students decide on an authentic Navajo rug design they would like to draw.

  • Step 3

    On white paper, students use Crayola Rainbow Twistables to design their Navajo rugs. Just twist out the colors! Recreate the shapes and sizes of each part of the design.

  • Step 4

    Group members collaborate to write a summary paragraph representing their learning about Navajo weaving.

  • Step 5

    Display Rainbow Rugs and student writing with other artifacts and information about Navajo culture and history.

Standards

LA: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.

VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

VA: Identify specific works of art as belonging to particular cultures, times, and places.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

MATH: Classify two-dimensional figures based on the presence or absence of parallel or perpendicular lines, or the presence or absence of angles of a specified size. Recognize right triangles as a category, and identify right triangles.

SCI: Investigate the motion of objects to determine observable and measurable patterns to predict future motions.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Identify and describe ways family, groups, and community influence the individual's daily life and personal choices.

SS: Demonstrate an ability to use correctly vocabulary associated with time such as past, present, future, and long ago; read and construct simple timelines; identify examples of change; and recognize examples of cause and effect relationships.

VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.

Adaptations

Possible classroom resources include: A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson; National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry: 200 Poems with Photographs That Squeak, Soar, and Roar! by J. Patrick Lewis; Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes edited by David Roessel & Arnold Rampersad

Students work in small groups to investigate the process that the Navajo used to prepare wool for weaving. Compare and contrast that process with how wood is prepared today for rug making. Organize research findings into an electronic format for presentation to classmates.

Invite a local weaver to visit with the class, sharing tools, materials, and techniques used in weaving. Prior to the meeting, students compose questions for the guest. After the visit, students post learning to a class blog.

Students work in teams of two or small groups to investigate other Native American weaving techniques and designs. Organize research into an oral presentation and have pictures of original designs to share with classmates. Use the processes from this lesson plan to prepare an authentic model for classmates to use in comparing these techniques with those of the Navajo Indians.

Students invent an original weaving design or blend multiple designs from several tribes into an original rug design. Use Crayola Rainbow Twistables to create this design.