According to Aborigine tradition, the ancestral beings of the "Dreamtime," left stories and songs about the world's creation and history to pass down through the generations. Oral storytelling is a highly significant art form in Aboriginal culture, and many ways exist to explain its importance to elementary school students. Have groups pass along traditional Aborigine stories in the classic "Telephone" game, where each student recites a short passage to the person sitting next to him, and it continues until the last person reports what he heard to compare to the original story for accuracy.
To this day, body painting is a big part of Aboriginal culture, and while the practice may not always carry the same spiritual meaning as it once did, it still recalls the rich history shared by Australia's most ancient people. Have elementary school students paint themselves and each other with the lines, dots and symbols Aborigines have used for thousands of years. Students can paint a paper plate with a face drawn on it in lieu of actually painting one another with lines and dots.
Aborigines used stencils as a way to record a group of people's presence and association with a particular site, and having elementary school students make stencils of their hands is an excellent art lesson to better understand this practice. Have children trace their hand on a scrap piece of paper, cut out the shape and attach it to a piece of construction paper with a loop of masking tape, so it can be easily removed. In a squirt bottle, mix two parts tempera paint with one part water and have students lightly spray the areas around the cut-out hand. After the paper is dry, have them remove the hand cutout and then decorate the stencil with traditional Aboriginal designs, dots and lines.
Perhaps out of necessity rather than anything else, Aboriginal art consists of the repeated and varying use of nine basic lines: short, long, arched, thin, thick, straight, zigzag and dots. Show elementary school students examples of traditional Aboriginal art, point out the simple variances in lines and dots, and show different details. Have students draw pictures of their own using the nine basic lines of Aboriginal art. This lesson on Aboriginal art will help youngsters better understand how lines, dots, arcs and borders effectively tell a story or convey a meaning.