3re, 4th and 5th Grade Weaving

STILL IN EDIT

SOME FINISHED PIECES

Her first piece of woven cloth!

Ms. Addison C was one of the first people to finish. Well woven, tied off, and done!

It might be small, but Jaxson did a pretty good job here.

Ms. Addison in 3rd did a great job here on her first woven piece.

I’ve taught weaving for quite some time.  Besides begin a nice activity for some, it adds to vocabulary with such words as loom, warp, weft, alternate, etc. It also gives me a chance to bring up the industrial revolution and point out that before machines all cloth was made by hand.

It starts with just wrapping string around a piece of cardboard.  The students have to measure every half inch to get the spacing right. This is called the warp of the loom.

Then it simply a matter of weaving a string over and under the warp, this is called the weft.

 

Looks like someone just getting started.

 

Here is someone cutting notches into a piece of cardboard to make a simple loom.

 

Pretty reasonable progress for just 2 days!

He’s really steaming along!

It definitely a group activity.

I believe this is 3rd grade.  This is the first time I’ve done weaving with all the third grades, going fine so far.

An almost finished piece

This is what the process looks like, students hunched over pieces of cardboard, string and yarn everywhere.

Nice peice, just about ready to remove from loom.

She did a great job here tyeing off and finishing the weaving.

7th Grade Weaving, First Photos

Below are some first photos of the 7th grade weaving project.  They have been a great bunch of students and I have enjoyed my time with them this year and I’m looking forward to next year.

Weaving

Ms. Sarah,

started weaving one day and created,

This!

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I’m not a very enthusiastic weaver and I’m glad I did not communicate the fact to Ms. Sarah, who did a great job on the small, stitched and folded-over bag.  That being said I’ve never went a year teaching where I did not teach it.  There are lots of words and concepts that can be covered using weaving, from math to social studies.  Warp, weft, alternate, up, down, etc., are just a few that come to mind.  I’ve taught it to kindergarten age students through adult, and all ages in between.

It starts out pretty simply, you cut some slots in some cardboard and work the string back and fourth.  This step is called creating a warp.  You can do this on a wood frame or a real loom also, but cardboard is easy to get a hold of and good enough for a first experience for most students.

Here you can see a student(Meisha) just getting started.

Here she is just a little further along.

A couple more student examples.

A nicely finished sample piece, destined to be a rug for a Barbie doll house, I believe.

Just a group shot of everybody weaving.  Just like quilting, it gives people a reason to sit and talk to each other.

The above is some macrame being done.  I teach that usually around the same time.  It was real popular in the 70’s, less so now. You can add beads and make nice bracelets, chokers, and items like that.  I didn’t get many good pictures of  the process though.