Artifacts

One of the major units that I planned for my two-week takeover is a brief study of Native Americans. As part of the unit, the students copied an artifact that represented the tribe they focused on during their research. We used this teacher-art technique called crinkle art to make it look like it was several hundreds years old. Of course, my kiddos like to help each other. One of my kiddos wanted to help wash off the paint of her classmate's painting. She recited verbatim the speech I gave to each kiddo to reinforce the meaning of the project. It went something like this:

KG: This is an artifact, right?
SV: Yea.
KG: What does the brown paint represent?
SV: I don't know.
KG: Where do you find artifacts?
SV: I don't know. In the dirt?
KG: Yea. What color is the dirt?
SV: Brown. Oh! I get it. The paint is like the dirt.