Book Buddies and Pouches

I recently finished two weaving workshops with students at McKelvie Intermediate School, Bedford, NH. It was great fun working with these creative fifth and sixth graders and their very nice art teacher, Mr. Flint!

Students learned weaving techniques that included:

• warping a loom
• shag weave
• plain weave
• chaining
• soumak
• making slits
• making twisted cord

I wasn't able to take as many photos as I would have liked due to time constraints, but I did get a sampling that should illustrate the activity fairly well.


Workshop 1
The students made woven bookmarks during the first workshop. But these bookmarks had personality. They were book buddies!

Engaged in the process.

These were done on cardboard looms warped with eight threads.

Here we have a finished one - a simplified version.

This was inspired by Erin Hunter's book series Warriors.

Workshop 2

During the second workshop, students created little pouches. This project was a bit more complex, but they did beautiful work nonetheless!

Pouches in progress show slits added to weave cord through.




A close-up. Almost finished!




Making the twisted cord.

Finished!

Art Show

Last week I went to see an art show put together by my friend and fellow teacher/illustrator, Anne Lederhos. She teaches art in Bedford, NH to grades 1-4. I had so much fun looking at all of the beautiful work, I thought I'd post some pictures.

The children spent several weeks learning about Native Americans and their art. The end result was a themed exhibit complete with a drum performance (which I, unfortunately, couldn't stick around for) and tables where exhibit goers could create their own Native American art .



Above is one of several amazing Native American portraits on display. These were done by fourth graders.

Here are more:

A quilt-like mural was hanging on the stage where the drummers performed:

This was crafted by Anne's Art Club students. Each student drew on a seperate piece of paper. Then all of the squares were combined to create a stunning mural. (That is a microphone stand in front to give you an idea of it's size.)

These are some charming Hopi Kachina dolls done by second graders.




Check out the colorful clay turtles by first graders:

I bet they had fun with those textures!

Below are examples of third grade storytellers.

So cute!

And lastly more fourth grade fabulousness:

Finely rendered little clay animals.

All the students in grades 1-4 had work in the exhibit, so there were many more wonderful pieces to see. Congratulations to all the students and Mrs. Lederhos!