Making our own Flute with a blessing from David Bud

On January 18 in our art room we had a visit from an elder named David Bud.  He blessed our flute material in ceremony that involved a smudge.  He used sage, tabbacco and cedar and spread the smoke over the boxes of material we later used to make our flutes.

We had a delicious feast of soup, blueberries, bannock (plain and raisin) and juice.  He told us if we couldn't finish our meals, we could not throw it away. He asked us to put it in a bucket so he could dump it by a tree, to give it back to Mother Earth.We have never done anything like that before.

We then had the chance to use drills to make the holes in our flutes.  We met Richard Dube and he played us a song and showed us how to blow properly in the flute.

Making our Flutes was fun, but then we got to PAINT THEM!!!

In art class we designed images for our flutes on a paper template.  When we were finished we had to prepare our flute so we could paint on it.  To do that we had to sand it to rough up the surface so the paint would stick.  Then we needed to tape our 'roost' to protect if from paint and remove the mouthpiece.  Ms. Ledger had stands for or flutes made of a block of wood and a nail.  We had to be very careful with them.

Once they were dried and finished, we got to PLAY THEM!!  We practice every day :)