Felted Oven Mitts Tutorial

Some places  in the world are in summer vacation mode, others on winter vacation, but everywhere, I'm sure, parents are looking for ways to do some meaningful, fun things with their children. I taught a summer felting camp for four to six-years-olds last week & I put together this little tutorial. If you decide to do this project, please do blog about it & leave a link here in the comments section. I would love to see what you come up with!

You will need: Wool batting/roving, two large trash bags, soap, hot water, scissors, embroidery floss & a sewing needle.

Here's what we did:

We spread out wool batting onto a large trash bag. If  you want to be *really* Waldorfy, you would of course not use a black trash bag with these young children. ;-) I estimate that the batting was about 2" (5 cm) thick. On top of the wool batting, the children spread some colorful wool bits. They were all from my "leftovers bag." I told them to use their fingers to make nice, fluffy clouds. They then put them in random places.

When the piece was ready to be felted, I squirted soap on the top. I used Dr. Bronner's Pure Castille Soap. Why? Because I had quite a bit leftover from our camping trip. Yes, this project has "leftover" written all over it. Don't you just love that?! I must say I had never felted with that soap before & I was very pleased with the outcome! Then we poured a pot of very hot water on the top. 

We covered the whole thing with another trash bag. I made sure that the surface wasn't too hot for the children to touch. The children then started rubbing, banging, pounding... 

... and after a while we rolled the whole thing up into a giant burrito of sorts & did some more rubbing, banging, pounding. - Mostly pounding and then even...

... some stomping! Gasp. Lots of fun!

When we unrolled the burrito, it looked something like this.

We put the felted piece in a bucket of cold water & rinsed all the soap out. After this step, I would recommend doing the process of adding soap, hot water & doing the burrito-felting-poundy thing & rinsing one more time. It will produce a stronger felt!

Then Father Sun worked his magic & did the drying.

I used an oven mitt I had at home & traced a template. We cut out two for each oven mitt. (One left & one right to ensure that the colorful felt is on the outside of the mitt!)

Finally, we sewed along the edges with cotton embroidery thread, using a simple blanket stitch. The children loved this project & the oven mitts were very well received by the parents!

Felted Necklaces

 Felted with and by four to six-years-old children. (The one in the middle is a "giant, precious diamond" in case you're wondering... )

 Some with few beads...

... others with more. All felted with enthusiasm & joy!

We started with "just round" beads & then the creativity of these wonderful children took over & they started felting all kinds of shapes. We then strung them onto a simple wool string. Voila. Simple, yet treasured!

Spicin' Up Math

Yesterday was a wonderful day & today I'm still riding a bit on that "high," so here's a Waldorf math ride for you. What you see here is work that was done by 2nd graders after they had been introduced to these forms in the spirit of "beautiful numbers make beautiful forms." Have you ever experienced math like this? Buckle up and get ready for the ride!

Take a paper, make a circle & divide the circle into 10 equal parts. (You may cheat with a compass if you are older than a 6th grader, but free-handing a circle is a nice exercise in itself.)

Going clockwise, place numbers from zero to nine. (Our number system really goes from zero to nine, not from one to ten.) Then, say a times table in your head and "connect the dots," ignoring the tens in the process. For example: The fours table goes 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40. You will then start with number 4 & draw a line to 8, from 8 to 2, from 2 to 6 and so on.

You will end up with something that looks like this...

Isn't that just awesome?

In this manner all times tables make different forms & some numbers do similar things.

You will see that 1s create a 10-sides polygon & that 9s do the same thing, just in reverse order. 2s make a pentagon, and 8s do the same thing, just in reverse order. 3s make a 10-pointed star & 7s do that, too, but in reverse order. 4s make a pentagram, and 6s do the same thing, just - yeap, you guessed right - in reverse order. 5s are rather boring, but they make a straight line.

It was so exciting for my 2nd graders to learn the - usually dreaded - times tables this way. I don't believe that education needs to be entertaining, but when something like this unfolds in front of you, it's just amazing! Beautiful numbers do make beautiful forms. We did a lot of jump roping, too. Try it! We had some visitors in our class during the math block and even these adults had never seen this before. They were quite amazed. There's enough meat (or tofu) here for an entire 2nd grade math block!

Head, Heart-N-Hands Thursday

I'm trying to find a balance between personal stories, craftiness & Waldorf-education related posts on this blog. I've come to love the idea of "WIP Wednesday," although Wednesday often passes me by. I'm going to start "Head, Heart-N-Hands Thursday," hoping to post impressions of bookwork across the grades as well as samples of practical work, recitations & songs. - It is never intended as something to be copied, but I know many take inspiration from it & I have often found such a peek into the classroom a helpful thing for the growth of my own ideas.

Below are some impressions of 2nd grade bookwork. They are of Saint Gall, or Caillech - his Irish name. They were essentially free drawings, although the children did receive some guidelines as to what should be in the picture. You can see the wide spectrum of the work 2nd graders do. Most importantly they loved the story and they were really into doing the bookwork!

Betty Botter

I had originally envisioned the tongue twister Betty Botter as "just" a speech exercise, but then the students ended up loving it so much that I actually had them create a book entry with a free drawing. So much enthusiasm. I just love the work!

Saint Brendan

The story of Saint Brendan is one of my favorite saint stories. What adventures. A quest of seven years! The pictures here were guided drawings my students created.

A favorite part of the long story was the story of the Easter worship on a "small island" that turned out to be a whale. One of Brendan's men shouts out, "Brendan, the island is sinking." - The students just loved that part!

Pumpkins...

♥ Autumn is my favorite time of the year! ♥

Saint Odilia

So begins the story of Saint Odilia... The students are slowly getting used to writing without "the golden living room."

Michaelmas Time!

Michaelmas is by far my favorite celebration in the cycle of the year. The all-school Michaelmas play is on Thursday. For now I hope everyone out there is slaying 'em dragons! The picture above was created by one of my 2nd graders today.

Gregory The Great

The 2nd grade language arts curriculum includes native legends, fables & stories of the saints. I'm using "Stories of the Saints" by Siegwart Knijpenga & "The Giant at the Ford" by Ursula Synge as my main resources. (For no particular reason) I told them of Gregory the Great first. The pictures were essentially free drawings by the students. I mostly have them do guided drawings, but every now and then I just like to see what they draw from their imagination. There's a wonderful story of Gregory hiding in a cave in the woods & a pillar of light streaming down from heaven leads the people to him. The students did writing with it, too - of course. I'm trying to make sure they have a solid foundation of sight words, so that is our language arts focus during this block. I'm telling them the story of Saint Odilia this week. I'll try to share some impressions at the end of the week.

Rona & The Moon

In the version of the story I told my class Rona is a man. I used the book "Maori Myths & Legendary Tales" by A.W. Reed as a source. The only version I could find online speaks of Rona as a woman & of course there are other differences in the story. You can find it here. My students loved it!

Greenfish

I read a sort of summary of a story that talked of the myths surrounding the creation of greenstone. I made it into a bit of a Michaelmas-type story. Super-abbreviated the story is basically about a fish. He finds a magic key to free a castle from the enchantment of a ferocious dragon. He swims against the current to bring the key to a courageous boy. Then he dies & turns into a greenstone, thus still giving us beauty today in the form of jade. I had the students draw the sea first & then draw the fish in yellow. Magic! - Green. It was nice for them to experience mixing colors in this way.

Running Forms

The 2nd grade form drawing curriculum explores mirror images & running forms. The latter are a great preparation for cursive writing. Above my chalkboard drawing. It was a quick sketch on the board one morning, so it's not perfect & the picture was taken at an angle, too. I always tell the students a story. This one was about a lake (blue line) with mountains in the back (yellow zig-zags) & a silly fish leaping in & out of the water (red loops).

After drawing the forms into the air, this is how one student's book entry looked.

Kahu & The Fairies

Our second story this week was (an adapted by me) version of the story of Kahu & The Fairies. I bought a wonderful book in this lil' bookstore in Christchurch. It's "Maori Myths & Legendary Tales" by A.W. Reed. Wonderful, wonderful stories!

How The Kiwi Lost Its Wings

(Please e-mail me at chocolatelilies [at] gmail [dot] com if you would like to have a copy of my version of the story. I'm having technical difficulties with uploading to blogger.)
I started the 2nd grade school year with a Native Legends/Form Drawing block. For this first week I chose some Maori stories. I had sent my students a postcard with a kiwi on it when I visited New Zealand, so on the first day I told them an (adapted by me) version of the story "How The Kiwi Lost Its Wings." Here are two random pictures & a book entry from students in my class.