Fall is my favorite season in the art room. While we don’t focus too much on holidays, we embrace the seasons and fall is a time for fibers! Weaving is my go to lesson to teach fibers to kids and we are weaving on cardboard looms!

Getting Ready to Weave!

I like to start my weaving lessons by reading one of my favorite books on the subject: The Goat in the Rug by Charles L. Blood and Martin Link. I love this book because not only does it do a great job of describing the process and history of weaving but the story is told from the perspective of the goat. It is hilarious! If you don’t have a copy you can watch me read it HERE.

I love this book!!

How to weave on cardboard

Third grade students are weaving on a rectangular cardboard loom. You can buy cardboard looms from art suppliers like Dick Blick or you can make your own like I did. For third graders, I use a 5×7 piece cardboard with slits across the top. My looms have either 7 or 9 slits across the top and bottom. We use colorful yard to weave some amazing designs.

Teaching kids to weave

After we get our looms wrapped with the warp string, the students set off weaving. We start with a basic tabby weave the first day or two then move on to more advanced designs.

Dollar Store combs are great for tamping down the fibers

Keeping all those colorful yarns organized can be a little tricky! I have tried many different ways of organizing it and this new system is by far the best. Each skein is placed in its own little compartment and the yarn is dispensed from the middle of the skein. Taking the time to teach this little procedure will save your sanity. Trust me!

Pretty little yarns each in their own little house!

I encourage all my students to attempt a box design and of course they love to learn the rya. Most of my students choose the fringed rya at the bottom of their weaving.

Once all the weft yarns are woven, the kids helped each other tie up all the loose ends and took off the cardboard. They got really good at tying knots!

Here are our finished projects at last year’s art walk.

I am so proud of my amazing weavers!

Scream Portraits

Leave a Comment / 3rd Grade Lessons, Fall Art Projects, Self Portraits / bloomingartaz

Inspired by Edvard Munch

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.
Edvard Munch

This week my third grade students created self portraits inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Scream. We added our own twist by using the tried and true straw blow watercolor painting for the hair. I love this project because it combines drawing portraits with the process art of straw blow painting.

Day one – Drawing the Portrait

After a discussion about the artwork we set off to draw our portraits. Students used mirrors to look at themselves and what their face would look like with their mouths open. We used a simple guide for the placement of facial features and proportion and set off drawing very lightly with pencil.

After drawing the outline of their portrait, students designed their t-shirt or whatever they were wearing that day. Finally, they chose skin tone crayons to color in the face and neck. It is important to have some multicultural or skin toned crayons on hand in the art room. I love the people colored crayons that I got from Lakeshore. The students took great pride in choosing their exact skin color.

Day two – Fun Stuff! Blowing the Paint!

The second day we set up our workspace for the straw blow painting. I placed a palette of liquid watercolor paint between every two kids. We practiced dipping our straws in the paint and placed ONE drop on the top of the head and tapped out the excess paint in the straw on to a paper towel. This step is important because any paint left in the straw will SPLAT on the paper instead of streaming up the paper.

Once the drop was in place, the students blew air through the straw to direct the paint to travel up the page. Blow painting with straws is a fun activity for children because it provides such a great opportunity to experiment with color and color mixing and different ways to paint other than using a paintbrush.

This is a show stopping project, kids love the process and parents love the product. I love it because it is a perfect fall portrait project that combines technique with all of the above!