Here’s a paper model of a birchbark container loosely based on examples from the Woodland Period of Native American culture in the Northeastern United States.
Youngsters can read the explanations and directions on the activity page, color the page, front and back, and then cut it out. By folding the trimmed piece gently along the dotted lines, the container takes shape. The ends and sides can then be glued together, or for more realism, a piece of plant fiber or yarn can be threaded through a small hole punched in the three parts that need to overlap at each end of the basket.
Younger students especially like to fill the baskets with paper fruits, vegetables and nuts from the Native American Harvest activity page. They can carry these home to show their families some of the plant foods that were important to Native American families in this part of the world for the past thousand years. These plant foods continue to be important to the descendants of those early Native Americans and to many other people all across the world to this very day!
Here’s the PDF: N. A. Birchbark Container