DLTK's Crafts for Kids
Teepee Craft

contributed by Leanne Guenther

A tipi is a type of home used by some Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. It is designed to be strong in windy conditions and easy to take down and move. This made it well suited to communities who traveled seasonally, often following bison.

Tipis are carefully constructed and have important cultural meaning. This craft can be used to explore how people design homes based on their environment.

This is a fairly simple craft for kids to make (you likely remember making one as a child).  It's fun for them to get creative when they decorate the paper before wrapping it around the straws.

Materials:

• scissors,
• tape
• 3 drinking straws or straight twigs
• something to decorate with (markers, stickers, paints, etc).
• paper and printer

Instructions:

• Print the template of choice.
• If using the B&W template, use markers, pencil crayons, stickers or paints to decorate the teepee as you see fit.
• Cut out the template.
• tape one straw on either side of the opening so it sticks up through the hole where the top of the teepee will be and so there's a fair sizes flap of paper between the opening and the straw.
• Tape the last straw in between the first two.
• Form your paper into a cone with the straws on the inside, sticking up through the opening in the top.
• Tape or glue your cone so it holds (I find tape works better).

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Template     (color)   or   (B&W)     

Print friendly version of these instructions