Third Grade Unit:
Creating Our Own Rock Art Symbols


Guiding Questions:
• What types of animals and people and places were portrayed, represented, or made special note of in ancient rock art (pictographs/petroglyphs)?
• Where did “the people who came before,” the people who settled/ made their homes here in NM many thousands and hundreds of years ago, get the inspiration for their rock art?
• What animals, people and places are important to us today?
• What are our favorite places to go out hiking, camping, and wilderness-watching?
• How do we make simple drawings to represent the animals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, bugs and insects, and places we want to include in our artwork?
• Why is it alright to copy rock art when we are studying it, but wrong to “just copy it" and use it in our own artwork?

Objectives/Goals:
• Understand how to simplify a drawing
• Know pets/pics (rock art) made by the ancestors of today’s local Indian nations
• Begin to understand the ideas of intellectual/cultural property rights (copyright)
• Learn how to make own simplified/stylized drawings of the world around us
Activities:
• View and discuss “If Rocks Could Talk” video
• Discussion using “Guiding Questions”
• Pencil drawings of wilderness subjects
• Simplify/stylize sketches, as needed
• Make final composition on 12”x18” paper using craypas/oil pastels and water colors

Vocabulary:
• Pictograph: a simplified or stylized drawing; a symbol
• Petroglyph: a drawing made on rock, often a pictograph rendered on rock
• Indian rock art: petroglyphs made by Native American people
• Native American: The earliest or original people living in North America and the descendants of these original people and tribes
• Ancestor: a relative who lived before
• Descendant: a relative who lives after
• Cultural property: a creation of a certain person, family, tribe or culture; an artwork, song, dance, story or any creation that connects to and belongs to a certain tribe or people