Wampum Craft Kids Activity

Do you need a kids activity for Sunday School or while your church hosts a KAIROS Blanket Exercise?  This lesson plan offers stories, crafts, and discussion ideas.  

Storytime:

Gather the kids and read the following stories (choose 1, 2 or all 3, depending on time)

• Wampum: The Story of Shaylyn the Clam
• Kaheri:io’s Wampum Project 
• Alex Shares his Wampum Belt

Discussion:

After or in between the books, ask the kids some reflection questions such as:

• What did you like about these stories? 
• Do you have any objects that tell a story? 
• What do these stories say about respecting each other?
• What do these stories say about loving our neighbours? 
• Come up with your own questions! 

Craft:

Share a wampum printout with each kid small or large are available through the PDF on this page.

Watch this youtube video with the kids, or watch it beforehand so you can convey the instructions to them. 

Instruct kids to design their own wampum on their papers, and then duplicate them using the beads (younger kids can use pipe cleaners, older kids can use string). 

Those making more complicated designs may need some focused time with the craft. Other may choose to only design their pages, or may only want to string beads in a single row - it’s fine! Just invite all of them to share what their designs mean. 

Materials:

• White and purple pony beads
• Pipe cleaners
• String or twine (with some stiffness for ‘stringing’ beads)
• Printouts of wampum grids
• Crayons or markers
• Books (listed below)
• Computer or screen for sharing videos 

Other Activities

If kids lose interest, share some colouring pages (Day Star or Creator's Sacrifice) with them, or show some of these videos from the First Nations Version of the Bible.