Weaving!

For this art project we focused on the Native American cultures and Pacific Island cultures and their tradition of weaving. Before the islands were introduced to the lightweight cotton fabric believe it or not they actual wore woven clothing. Sounds really miserably hot to me, but there was a negative effect of the introduction of cotton-unfortunately that tradition of their weaving is dying. It is important to teach children of past practices and help them understand how cultures use to be. For more information on this try looking at this website http://donsmaps.com/pacificnwclothingmasks.html

In creating our weavings we used old styrofoam lunch trays as our weaving string holder thing. You can used cardboard, or if you are a real big spender use an actual weaving loom! But have the children cut even slits (about 1 inch in) on both ends. Then have them weave a string up and down throughout the loom and tie off. You can literally use any material you want to weave- fabric, hemp, yarn, grass, hair, ANYTHING! For my project I used dried grass and yarn to experiment with weaving.  My weaving is suppose to represent a flying bird if you can't tell (It is a little harder to weave actually things than you think). Have fun weaving with your children!