Snow Snake

 This week, in a prelude to our spring Native American Study, we had our House Table groups work on their next collaborative project: constructing a track for Snow Snake. Snow Snake is a traditional Native American winter sport played by many tribes in the Great Lakes Region. Narrow tracks are created in the snow for long, thin sticks to be thrown down in an attempt to see whose snow snake stick can slide the farthest distance. 

For this construction, kids had to have a way to clear a smooth path through the snow, free of bumps or grass patches that a snow snake might catch on. It was challenging to make the path a straight one and several tracks found themselves moving in a more diagonal path. The danger with these is that the snow snake will jump the rim as it is unable to negotiate turns. 

Here again, teamwork that included coordinated tasks was helpful in leading groups to successful results. Some kids gathered snow to make the rim or walls of the track, others dragged sticks (or themselves) down the track to pat down the snow to make it smooth, and still others used a practice snow snake to test their runs. 

Each test underwent a final "official" throw. The results were very close with each group's snow snakes traveling similar distances. We hope to have more snow so we can try our hands at this again - it would have been nice to have had a few days to play the Snow Snakes game on our tracks had the weather not melted our efforts!

Enjoy the pictures below of the building and testing of our runs!