From basket weaving to pottery, students at Dana Road Elementary are getting a firsthand feel of what Native Americans did hundreds of years ago.

Gifted teacher Lana Fuller said it’s great for students to get hands on experience to supplement their education.

“We had been studying Native Americans since September, and we went to a festival in Natchez so they could see some crafts and things Indians did,” she said. “They got to see artifacts and things like that.”

Fuller said she thought it would be fun for her students to see what that was like firsthand, so she recruited the help of two honors ceramics students from Warren Central High School, Vallye Russell and her son Jesse Fuller.

“I thought they could get together and use their skills to help me teach,” she said, adding she was surprised with how much the high school seniors knew.

Fuller said she tries to do as much enrichment and different activities as she can with her students.

“I try to expose them to as many different types of art as I can because they just don’t get that much,” she said. “I figured in gifted that would be a higher-level experience for them.”

Before Fuller’s students are able to jump into a fun project they must totally understand the background and why they’re doing it.

“You have to study it and do the research,” she said. “They’ve got to learn that high level vocabulary and be able to explain it and how it works.”

Second-grader Keirra Bishop, 7, said she’s been learning about pottery since she went on a field trip this year with Fuller to see how ceramics are made.

Wednesday was Bishop’s first time to practice the craft, and she called the experience fun. The pot Bishop and the rest of her class made was a pinch pot.

“It’s made out of clay,” she said. “You stick your thumb in it and you just start pinching with your thumb and your index finger around the edges.”

Many students used toothpicks to put designs into their pots. Bishop said she wrote her best friend Mia’s name and her own name on her pot, which she plans to give to Mia.

The pottery lesson came after a unit on Native Americans, Bishop said.

“They use everything in their area to make stuff,” she said. “The Pueblos used sun-dried clay, and then they put in in water to smooth out the hard clay that had already dried and fill in the cracks.”