Naidoc Week is fast approaching and I was looking for some ways for our boys to learn about the Aboriginal people of Australia and their culture. I created these Aboriginal Symbol Stones that can be used in many ways for our boys to find out about the history of the the Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal Symbol Stones
To create your own Aboriginal Dreamtime Story Stones, you will need:
- polished stones
- permanent markers or acrylic paint / paintbrush
- Aboriginal Symbol Printable Pack
To create your own Aboriginal Story Stones, first you need to clean your stones. Do this by washing them in some clean water and completely drying.
Next, print out the Aboriginal Symbol Printable pack. The first two pages are vocabulary cards that can be used as a reference for the Aboriginal symbols. You could also use the following websites: Aboriginal Art, Aboriginal Art Online, Aboriginal Symbols.
Some of the ways we used these stones were:
- We used them as we read Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories, placing the stones in order of what happened in the story and then the boys retold the story by looking at the stones.
- We used these stones to create our own stories. In the printable pack, you will find some notebooking pages. Our boys chose a notebooking page with the symbol that they wanted and wrote a story about that symbol.
- Researching the symbols. Again, we used the note booking pages, but this time, our boys wrote the meaning of the symbol and then research that symbol and what it meant to the Aboriginal people.
- Play a game called ‘ngaka ngaka, which means ‘look look’.’ This game is the same as the game now known as tic tac toe or naughts and crosses. To play, you will need 18 polished stones with Aboriginal symbols on them. You could also created your own board like they use for tic tac toe. Our boys just drew lines with chalk on the driveway. The aim is to get ‘three in a row.’
- Memory game. For this game, the leader places the stones on the ground in a row. The other children try to memorise the order in which the stones have been laid. After a set time, roughly a minute or two (though this depends on the age of the children and how many stones you have), the children turn around and take turns at attempting to call out the correct order of the stones. When someone calls out the correct order, it is their turn to be the leader and the game starts again.
To get a copy of the Aboriginal Symbol Printable Pack, click on the link below or the one above:
*** Aboriginal Symbol Printable Pack ***
Penguin Study