How to Make a Totem Pole

Posted on May 28th, 2009 by Carmelia

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A totem pole is an old art form used to tell stories and depict notable people in a tribe. North American tribes make totem poles out of heavy wood filled with rich carvings. You and your little one can make totem poles too, out of some everyday household materials. Here’s how.

Materials

Plastic container jars or tissue roll cardboard. The container jars must be uniformly sized.
Masking tape or duct tape
Scissors
Marker
Paper mache (1/2 water, 1/2 white glue and tissue paper)
Coloring materials
Art paper

Procedure

Totem poles usually go no higher than seven layers each. Based on the size of your plastic container jars, try limiting your layers up to five for stability reasons.
Agree on what characters to paint or draw on each layer of the totem pole. You can also do a sequential story.
You can choose different containers for your totem pole, but make sure that they are uniformly-sized. Alternatively, you can use the biggest container as the base, with the smaller containers on top. Identify each layer with each character or story scene.
Use the masking tape or duct tape to tape the containers together.
You can put designs on the characters by making paper mache. Once the paper mache is dry, you can paint over it using water-based paint.
You can also use colorful cutouts and stick them on each layer or character. Stickers are another way to decorate your totem pole.
Decorate each totem pole layer or character distinctively from each one. Make funny faces, scary faces, fairtyale characters or even members of your own family in each totem pole layer or character.
Another very easy way to decorate the totem pole is to draw and color a scenery using art paper and art materials, and wrapped around each layer.
Try to make the totem pole as tall as you want by sticking it on a heavy base.