When my two daughters were little, we created corn husk dolls for them to play with. Living in a very isolated Northern Arizona community of Happy Camp while my husband worked for the U.S. Forest Service, there weren’t a lot of activities for them to take part in. Newspapers were brought in several days after they were published. There was no radio and what little TV we were able to receive was still black and white. There was a small library and a movie theatre when we moved there but theatre burned down. There were a few other kids living on the Forest Service compound that they would play with.
We had a small (16 foot) travel trailer that we used to get out and see something different. We took it up the mountain to Poker Flat, to the local hot springs, and what they loved best was taking it to Cave Junction, a small town that we could access by traveling over the mountain from California into Oregon. There, we could get pizza and other junk food and go to the outdoor drive-in movie theatre. There was even a small museum.
Living in Happy Camp made creativity a necessity. And we learned how to make corn husk dolls. They were ideal to take with us when we took the travel trailer to places in the forest where there baby dolls could have been lost or gotten dirty. The two girls had fun playing with these corn husk dolls as they created imaginary stories.
If you have kids, corn husk dolls are easy to make and fun to play with. You can buy dried corn husks at your local craft stores or online or you can just save the husks from your ears of corn and let them dry.
The following video from youtube not only shows you how to make the corn husk dolls but also gives you the Native American history behind them. Enjoy!