Weaving With Little Ones

The beginning of November always has me thinking of Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving makes me think about doing weaving projects. (Yeah, I also think about all of my favorite foods .......) Pretty sure back in the day I was weaving paper place mats when I was in elementary school.

Anyway...... I wanted something really simple for my kindergarten and first grade students. This project goes back YEARS! Pretty sure from when I was a scout leader. What I told them was: this was an intro to weaving. Also, a great intro to sewing because of the up and down motion. We used plastic canvas, which was donated to the art room along with plastic lacing donated by my sister. Which I lugged home from New York last time I was there, and I wonder why the TSA always leaves notices in my suitcase???

 

Anyway......... I was able to cut each sheet into 26 bookmarks. They each measured about 1" by 5". Early finishers in 4th grade grade and I cut the plastic lacing about 7" long.

 

 I started the lesson by reading the book The Goat in the Rug. I loved asking the students what they thought the book was about after telling them the title. They just assumed a goat is wrapped up in a rug. They also enjoyed the fact that the book was told from the goat's perspective as she explains the steps required to turn her wool into a rug.

Then I demonstrated the process on my Elmo, which is a camera that projects onto my white board, how to weave the plastic lace through the plastic canvas. Not gonna lie, I wasn't sure my kindergarten students were going to be capable of this, so I was pleasantly surprised with the awesome results.
I had students take one piece of lacing at a time to cut down on waste. If they take all the pieces they need at once, they tend to lose them. Also, my students have pocket folders to put unfinished work in, so I didn't worry too much about putting names on the projects. You could have students put them in envelopes with their names or wrap them in paper with their names.

 

 

 This first grade class loved just sitting on the floor weaving together.

This project cost nothing to do with my students-which is the greatest thing there is. But if you aren't quite as lucky as me, you can find the plastic canvas at Michael's for .69 cents a sheet and their brand of plastic lacing for about $3 a spool. Overall not a bad deal. Also, consider sending out an email in the event staff or parents have some of this stuff they would like to get rid of.

This project was extremely cart friendly as at one point last week I needed to be on a cart due to a controlled lock down.

Thanks for reading and happy Thanksgiving to all!

T'was the Week Before Halloween

This past week I didn't really want to start anything new, AND I wanted to get all my classes aligned. You know- all of the same grade levels working on ALL the same lessons. AND I knew my students would want to have a little fun for Halloween. (They should have fun every week except.... NOW we have EOC's.)   Below you will see what my students were up to last week.

My 4th and 5th graders learned how to make pop-up cards! A really BIG SHOUT OUT to Matthew Reinhart, (Google him) a paper engineer and author of MANY incredible Pop-Up books. I was extremely fortunate to take a workshop with him at my state conference.

Basic directions for this card are as follows. Fold paper in half, like a book. On the folded edge or crease draw 2 lines as shown in the first photo. Cut the lines.

 

 Then fold the cut section up, flip over and fold again, you are intentionally breaking the fibers on the paper. Then open the card and push the cut section through to the inside to create the pop-up.

   

Now because I really wanted this to take only one session I used this amazing gizmo in the teacher's workroom to have pre-cut shapes available for my students to use. They used double stick tape to attach their shape to the pop-up and used another paper larger than the first sheet for the outside of their card, which they also attached with the double stick tape.

And just look at how creative they were!

   

Some students chose to make their own shape for inside their card.

 

I knew this was a very successful lesson, however the real joy I got from this was when a student brought me in one that he made, on his own, at home.  Oh YEAH!

My 3rd graders are all working on a positive/negative value painting-which I will share in a future post.

My 2nd graders did pumpkin weaving. Really quick and simple. They traced a pumpkin shape, folded it in the middle (I pointed out to them that it was NOT symmetrical as one side of the pumpkin was higher than the other.) After folding the paper, they drew lines as shown in the second photo. They cut on those lines and then they were ready to weave.

    

Kindergarten and first graders had the opportunity to do bats, inspired by the book Stellaluna. Turns out that book is part of the first grade reading series so I gave students a choice.

Since Halloween and costumes were on everyone's mind, I had students draw costumes on their bats.

 

 

I made bat tracers that I cut in half to be able to teach my students a little about symmetry and following directions. 1-Fold paper in half.  2-Place the straight edge on the fold (line of symmetry). 3-Trace around the outside of the body with a pencil (DON'T trace the straight edge). 4-Cut out, open and decorate.  I do caution students to let me check their papers before cutting. Overall it went well.

Of course on Friday we had a storybook parade and here's my costume. Turns out I had a few crayons that quit or fell out of my box. I had NO idea what the kindergarten team had planned!
(By the way-I made my crown using crayon picks from cupcakes that my daughter saved me. I hot glued them to a plastic headband after breaking off the pointy part.) Thinking of wearing the crown on a daily basis-just call me the Queen of Crayons or Miss Crayon........ I'm thinking I had too much sugar.........

 

From what I have seen on Facebook this past week there have been many wonderful costumes used by teachers to inspire and have fun with their students. Way to go! I know I costumed up to see all my student's happy faces!!

With so many wonderful blogs out there-THANKS for reading mine!