Inuit Diorama

 

            Today's Snack: Make a cheese igloo! Take a quantity of small cheddar cheese cubes, or cut them yourself (with adult supervision!). Now build a circular igloo, using cream cheese that you have let soften on the countertop for a few minutes, and beaten with a spoon, as your "mortar." Stick the cubes together with tiny blobs of cream cheese and form them into an igloo. By the time it's done, you'll be starving! So eat and enjoy!

For your drink, it would be very fun to make special Inuit ice cubes in advance. The Inuit people preserved their meat and fish in ice because they didn't have (or need!) freezers or refrigerators. Now, you wouldn't REALLY eat worms, but you can sure have a tasty gummy worm represent "meat." Take a gummy worm, and drop it into an empty ice cube tray. Continue for each opening in the tray. Fill with water. Freeze. Then drop your "Inuit ice cube" into apple juice or white grape juice to go with your cheese igloo.

 

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Supplies:

 

Ask for a white plastic or Styrofoam meat tray in the meat department of your grocery store; tell them it's for a learning project; say thank you!

 

One or more eggs, cracked to preserve the dome shape,

washed out inside and dry; this will be your igloo, and you can try to remove a bit of shell to make an opening, but beware - it cracks easily

 

Foil

 

Blue cellophane

 

White flaky glitter or cotton

 

One "bubble" cut apart from bubble wrap

 

Download and print out small photos from the Internet of

a polar bear, walrus, seal, whale tail, caribou, Northern Lights, a kayak and other images that are from the Inuit habitat; cut into small pieces (see below)

 

Gluestick or tape

 

For people, you can purchase tiny Native American

plastic figures (like Army men) in a hobby store,

or just bend wire or bobby pins to represent humans

 

 

 

 

            The Inuit culture (pronounced "IN-you-it") is one of the most creative and interesting in the world. The Arctic people we often call "Eskimos" or "Aleuts" do the most with the least, in terms of available natural resources, of just about anybody in the world.

 

            Let's make a diorama - a miniature scene - that represents a lot of the aspects of the Inuit world. It's fun to "build another world" and imagine what it would be like to live there!

 

 

 

            That world is characterized by ice, snow and water, so it's good to have a white container in which to build our Inuit habitat.

 

            Put a layer of foil on the bottom to represent the land. You can tape it down with circles of tape underneath if you wish.

 

A large part of the Arctic world is water, especially icy water. So cut a scrap of blue cellophane and place it over the foil to represent the water. That's the source of a lot of the Inuit's food supply - fish, walrus, seals and whales. Imagine how hard it would be to get all your food by fishing and hunting. They used harpoons, which are kind of like a big spear on a pole tied with a leather rope that they would throw at the animal, and haul it back in. Whew! What a way to make a living.

 

The sea is also where the Inuit get the driftwood that occasionally comes by - their only source of wood, since the tundra, where they live, is a gigantic plain with no trees. They would carve things out of the wood, and burn it for fire. They also carved a lot of special things, including the needles they used to sew their clothes, out of walrus and seal bones and tusks.

 

Nowadays, today's Inuits live in homes much like yours, built of wood that they truck in, but in the olden days, when they would go out into the Arctic wilderness to hunt and fish, they would construct rounded, dome-shaped igloos out of big blocks of snow that they would use as temporary dwellings.

 

            We will use an empty eggshell to represent one or more igloos in our diorama.

 

            Of course, snow is an important part of the Inuit landscape, so carefully sprinkle white flaky glitter over the land, concealing the edges of the blue cellophane to resemble a seashore.

 

            You can also put a "bubble" from bubble wrap into the water to represent an iceberg or ice shelf.

 

            Now place the small photos of animals that you downloaded and printed out from the Internet around on the walls of your diorama, where they would go. For example, a whale tail should go near the water. Of course, these wild animals such as polar bears would not ordinarily come near people and their homes, but for our diorama, it's OK to position them around this Arctic home.

 

            Perhaps these will do; if so, copy each small photo as many times as you need, so that you don't waste paper printing them out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            If you are lucky enough to have miniature figures, such as people, dogs and a canoe or kayak, you can play with your diorama. But if you don't have ready-made people, you can make them out of wire or bobby pins. To make them realistic, cut a bit of dryer lint or fake fur (ask a parent before you cut anything!) and glue it around the top of your "figure" like the fur around a parka!