Free and Easy Crafts for Kids: Totem Pole Craft and Activities

THE STORY

This is a totem pole craft based on the Wil Sayt Bekwhlgat ("Where the People Gather") totem pole at the Native Education Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

You can read all about the construction and placement of this pole in the book...

Where the People Gather by Vickie Jensen

In this wonderful book we find out that the Wil Sayt Bekwhlgat totem pole was inspired by a story that the NISGA'A artist and master totem pole carver Norman Tait heard from Hattie Ferguson, an elderly Tsimshian woman from Kitkatla.

This story has been adapted for children:

Download Totem Story Adapted for Children

This adapted story is also available in picture book format:

Download Totem Story in PDF book format

THE TOTEM POLE ACTIVITY

Once the story has been read aloud we can proceed to the activity which involves scattering small totem animal pictures around and then holding up big pictures one by one and challenging the kids to find the totem animal you are displaying.

Download small animal pictures to cut and scatter
Note: there are six animals in this set and it is fun to make multiple copies to scatter about.

Download the large full page pictures to display
Note: There is a bit of text included to speak when displaying each picture.

THE TOTEM POLE CRAFT

I made the pole for this totem pole out of a sheet of brown construction paper rolled lengthwise into a long tube, but there are lots of other things to make the pole out of. If you make it out of construction paper it will probably stand up by itself, but you can also use my template below to make a simple totem pole base. I made mine from green card stock:

Totem Pole base instructions and template

Once you have set up the pole, all that remains is to cut out the totem animals and glue them onto the pole. We provide the totem animals both already colored and in uncolored formats:

Totem animals in color