Sewing School

Creative Classroom: Seeds

Seeds have played a big role in our classroom this past month.

There are so many great books about seeds and gardening for kids out there. We started with Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Elhert, The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, and Seeds! Seeds! Seeds by Nancy Wallace.

A favorite activity was sorting seeds using tweezers. The seed sorting kit: 6 packets of seeds (I checked first to make sure they were big enough to pick up with tweezers), a 6 pack egg carton, and tweezers. In case you were wondering, our seeds were pumpkin, watermelon, cucumber, zinnia, peas, and sunflowers. I taped a sample seed on the front of the packet.

To sort: dump all the seeds into the clear container then carefully sort them into the egg carton with tweezers. This activity helped to build fine motor skills, seed recognition, and cooperative learning, not to mention patience! At the end, put the seeds back into the seed packets.

Another fun game is the Seed Match. I taped a number of seeds (from 1-10) on a card then wrote the number and added a picture of the kind of seed on another card. So, you will match the 10 seeds on the yellow card to the green "ten" card and discover that the seeds are onion seeds. Each yellow card has a different number of seeds. This worked well with all those small seeds I had.

Games to play: simple matching, memory, put the seed cards in a bag and feel how many seeds to match. The kids found several uses for this one.

Of course we also had to find seeds in food. I bought 19 different kinds of fruit and veggies that held seeds. Each kid got to find the seeds inside.

We made a seed collection.

After our exploration, we cut up the fruits and veggies to make fruit salad and vegetable soup.

I think it goes without saying, but we planted seeds, too! We are monitoring our seeds' growth on a timeline and have hopes to transplant the seedlings in the school's garden.

I hope you find ways to explore and learn about seeds with your kids.

Lesson: Quick Quilt Journal

These little journals have been a big source of pride and fun for my class this week. They are so simple, so creative, and so fun that I thought I'd share.

Materials needed - cardstock or construction paper, several sheets of writing paper, fabric scraps, glue, scissors, stapler.

Step 1: Glue scraps of fabric onto cardstock or construction paper in a quilt-like pattern. You may have to cut the fabric to get a good shape. Be sure to put glue on the entire area. After drying, trim any extra fabric around the edges of the paper.

Here is a completed journal cover. Lauren made an "L" for her name.

Step 2: Fold your sheets of writing paper in half. We used 4 sheets of paper.

Step 3: Fold your journal cover in half.
Step 4: Put the writing paper into the journal cover to make a book.
Step 5: Open the journal and staple the paper onto the cover. As a teacher, I have access to a cool, long armed stapler which makes this step super easy. I did try it with a regular stapler, though, and it works out OK. We stapled our journals 3 times along the middle.

Now your journal is finished! Yes, it is that easy! The only hard part is waiting for the glue to dry (ours took a day because we use a lot of glue!).

The journals have inspired wonderful stories, illustrations, and lists. I think these would also make nice gifts for friends and relatives. Try different sizes - a tiny quilt journal for a purse or backpack.

No-Sew Fashion Show

These little fashion designers walked down the runway during an all-school celebration as the "No-Sew Fashion Show." As I watched them wrap pieces of fabric around each other to create sundresses, skirts, and tops, I was reminded of my own "wrap skirts." In high school, I would often take a piece of fabric from my mom's stash, wrap it around my waist, secure it with a safety pin, and proudly wear it to school. How much do I love these girls' creativity, willingness to try new things, and desire to make things themselves...

Calling All Campers!

Andria and I are excited to be teaching a session of Sewing School at the Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal School summer camp in Memphis, TN. The camp is June 15-20 from 8am-1pm open to boys and girls entering 1st grade-5th grade. I will also be teaching an Advanced Sewing School session the same week for kids entering 3rd - 8th grade. See the camp registration for more details.

Rainbow Tapestry - Complete!

We just put the finishing touches on the Rainbow Tapestry. After 4 1/2 weeks, we were ready to be finished. I really loved how everyone worked together and shared good conversation while stitching. To finish, I just turned the edges under twice and whipstitched with embroidery thread. I am regretting that I didn't take a picture of the back, but we whisked it over to the annual school auction. I hope it's new owner loves it as much as I do.

During our school's weekly "Celebration" we showed off the tapestry. There was pride in our hearts.

Hmm....I'm wondering what we're going to do next...

Creative Classroom: Story Quilt

To finish our unit on quilts and work on story comprehension and retelling, we decided to make our very own story quilt. To make things easier, we read a classic fairytale and then gave each child a specific part of the story to illustrate on a 5x5 square. Someone was "My what big eyes you have, Grandma!" while another was "the wolf swallowed Little Red Riding Hood whole."

After the squares were finished, we put all 19 in sequential order. They loved finding the other parts of the story and "reading" the quilt.

What's next? Well, we hope to continue to retell the story and share it with other classes. One idea is to have the kids write a sentence about their squares. Our Spanish teacher is also excited to use it to have the kids retell Caperucita Roja in Spanish!

Garden Felt Board

Our new Science Lab theme is gardening. Of course we had to make our own felt board garden.

I glued a background of dirt (brown) and sky (blue) to a piece of foam core board. The kids drew things you grow or find in the garden on cardstock and then gluesticked a bit of felt to the back.

Inspired by Lois Elhert's Growing Vegetable Soup, we also made labels for each item.

This was an easy and fun collaborative activity for our classroom. You should make one too!

Little Basket

I immediately fell for these cute baskets at Maya*Made. While hers was more geared towards Easter, I thought the kids would enjoy them as a space for their little "things." And boy was I right! Easy and quick, the kids turned these out during the hour and were so proud of the results.

When making it with kids: I made a pattern (8X13) for the body of the basket and helped them mark the corners so it would sit right. I also made a pattern for the handle, although some decided to use ribbon. For fabric, we used felt and a black canvas that I had on hand.

Clothespin Dolls

Clothespin dolls were all the rage in Sewing Club. As you can see from the pictures below, there were lots of variations from sweet little girls to St. Patrick himself!

I of course have been drooling over the elaborate ones at The Small Object. My excitement prompted me to buy the pattern at Posie Gets Cozy but thought those instructions were a little too advanced for kids.