Grade: Pre-K (can be modified for any age, including adults)
***Allow at least two days for this project, more time if you want students to dye the wool themselves.
I was very excited to do this project with my students. I have always enjoyed fiber arts and wanted to invite my four and five year old students to explore a new medium. I have done traditional weavings for years, using a cardboard loom with yarn for the weaving and while these are always a very rewarding and fun project I wanted to tweak it a bit. As an Art Educator it is very important to keep your own excitement as you are teaching; if you are bored with the project your kids will definitely be bored :)
I decided that I could get the fresh approach I needed by changing the medium from yarn (which my five year olds would not have had the patience to work with) to a thicker staple of raw wool. To make it more exciting still, I washed the wool at my house and after it was dry dyed it all the colors of the rainbow. While my wool was drying I went on a stick hunt and found perfect twigs to construct 17 looms for my students to paint. I used a hot glue gun to tack them at the corners and would wrap with twine AFTER the kids painted them with acrylic.
***helpful hint: wool washing is a time consuming process but is worth it for the reaction from the kids. I found several DIY tips on pinterest.
When I brought the wool back to school the kids were so excited. I showed them the wool before it was washed and asked them to touch it, smell it and describe it. Most of them were not too crazy about the fresh farm smell that crept from the box :) But after washing and coloring the kids could not keep their hands off of it! So it was time to start our project officially! I know it seems like we have already done a lot but, the joy of being an Art Teacher, that was all just prep work :)
I like to start lessons by inviting my children to make observations. We had a conversation about wool and learned about shearing sheep, using wool and what that tuft of wool could be turned into. I showed them examples like my mittens, a small felted bird, my wool coat and some yarn. This is not needed but I like to offer them many opportunities to learn something new:
Time to paint the looms: Each student is given their own loom (pre-made) and they were asked to add all the colors they wanted and elements of design like dots, stripes and other patterns. Let the looms dry and let the kids go to recess :)
Looms are dry: Time to transform them into looms. Start by securing them and wrapping the corners with twine. Then use either a fine yarn or embroidery thread to string the loom. When you are doing this you need to make sure that the string is securely attached to the top and then run a taught string to the parallel bottom. Do this four our five times. When done your loom should have four parallel strings running from top to bottom.
Time to weave: I invited all of my students to sit in a circle with me and in the middle I put my SUPER LOOM. It is about 2'x2'. I asked the children to come up one at a time to practice weaving. Using scraps of colored fabric we practiced together and when we were done we made a beautiful floppy rug type thing :) But the kids also were prepared to do their own projects now.
Allow the kids to choose their colors. I also kept some natural color wool incase the children wanted to use that instead of all colors. Here is the basket they chose from:
Many of them chose to make a pattern like an AB, ABC, or they chose to make a rainbow starting with red and ending with violet. Starting with their first color the children wove over one string and under the next and then they repeated the pattern until the end of the row. Then they went to their next color.
I loved watching them invent these textures and explore this new medium. It was very rewarding and all the work was worth it! Take a look at the results:
-Art Lady
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