Preparing for the Potlatch

Next week is the summative week for our generosity unit. We are having a potlatch for our summative activity. A potlatch is a traditional First Nations gathering used to celebrate, commemorate, communicate and acknowledge specific events such as naming ceremonies, weddings, memorials and others. Guests at these events offer gifts to the host family to support their event recognizing that these offerings will be returned at a later date. The host family will redistribute the wealth they accumulated along with the new gifts received to those invited to the potlatch.

In preparation for our potlatch, we started to prepare gifts for give away. The children wanted to make "friendship decoration macaroni bracelets". The children didn't want just plain macaroni, they wanted colourful macaroni! We used vinegar and food colouring to dye the pasta. We were limited in our choice of colours having only blue, orange, yellow and red food colouring. Simone made a connection to our last unit on colour. She wanted to dye her pasta green. I said "we don't have any green." Simone's response was "Yes, we do. We just have to mix blue and yellow." Her comment started a wonderful conversation on how we can mix the colours to create other colours!

After

Before

The other gift the children want to bring to the potlatch is a "big ginormous cake that says Potlatch." The children voted on the flavour of the cake. Chocolate won by one vote! We made the cake and we will freeze it until next week when the children will ice the cake with Wendy. The potlatch will be a wonderful celebration demonstrating generosity and togetherness.

Ready for the oven

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