Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Creating Storybooks from Shoshoni Legends

The students in SYLAP have been working on an amazing project. They listened to recording of Shoshoni legends that were recorded some years ago by Wick Miller. They worked with the texts of the stories and then compared the different versions to come up with a simplified version that could be turned into a storybook for children. They are creating the text for the books and all of the artwork. I am so proud of how they are progressing with this project. We had a nice discussion about the legends and what things needed to be included in the books. In the future, I would like to use these books as language learning tools for young learners to learn both language and some culture. This is a great community building activity because it connects these students with the past and with the future. I just know that the little children will love the stories and they will be 'cool' because of who made them. Here are some of the kids working on their illustrations.
I took my kids up there for a couple of days this week with me. My son Colby learned a lot about some things being done for school curriculum on Native Americans, and both kids heard all of the legends with the pictures. My daughter Sierra especially liked this and listened to all of the stories more than once. She learned how to say thank you in Shoshoni and has been using that. It has been fun to see the teenagers get excited about the project and share their work with my kids. My kids also went home and shared the stories with some friends and family. The kids have used a variety of mediums to create the artwork and they are all very talented.


3 comments:

  1. I'm glad your kids came in, they helped my partner at the time Julian, and i'm sure the other teams. We got GREAT ideas on what the kids like, and what to change, aisen tsaa!!

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  2. THOSE KIDS WERE COOL!!

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