Grade 3: Fibres Lesson 3 & 4

Fibres Lesson 3: Wool

As I mentioned in my last Fibres post we are studying the fibres in chronological order and so after leather comes wool.  To start the discussion we quickly recapped about the first body coverings being made of animal fur and skin  I then asked my son if he could think of another type of fibre that we use that comes from animals? After several clues we arrived at wool, I then brought out some wool roving, some spun wool and pieces of leather and fur from my basket under the table, we all felt them identifying the differences and how they might be good materials for colder weather. I then read a story from the free resource  'In the child's world:morning talks and stories for kindergarten' I did not read directly from the text rather I paraphrased to make it more pallatable. (I have included a link below)
I used the activity/questions about wool then I read 'Pelles New Suit' which explains the process of wool collection and processing. I then asked him to copy the image from the blackboard into his MLB. 

In the Child's World

After our MLB we tend to do our hands & Heart activity, I decided for this fibre that we would make some drop spindles so that tomorrow we can spin some wool which we will then use to weave a pouch. Gosh that is a lot of handwork, obviously we will not complete this in 2 lessons the weaving will last span over several lessons and probably the rest of the block.

To make the drop spindles we used some bamboo chopsticks which we got free from a Chinese restaurant, a eyelet screw and some Fimo.  First I got the children to choose the colours that they wanted to make their weight from then they squished and rolled it out to the desired thickness, they have to be quite thick to provide the requisite weight for spinning. once the Fimo was thick enough I used a jar lid to cut out the Fimo circles, the kids then poked holes in the centre that were just big enough to ensure a snug fit once the chopstick was inserted.  Whilst the weights were baking we screwed in the eyelets into the chopsticks,then when the weights were baked we inserted the chopsticks.

Fibres Lesson 4:Wool

I asked my son to recall yesterdays lesson, particularly how wool is gathered and processed. We then came up with a summary together after which we identified where any commas and full stops go and  identified the nouns, verbs and adjectives. I have found that it is better if we can of free write the summary and then go back and add in the grammar, this seems to work for him. He is not keen to underline the nouns and adjectives etc in colour so I just get him to point them out. Once the summary is grammatically correct I get my son to copy it out into his MLB and add illustrations, sometimes I give him example illustrations and sometimes like below his does his own.

After he finished his writing we all lad a go at spinning wool, I had watched several Youtube videos before hand to make sure that I could sort of do it. It is harder than it looks, LOL!  Anyhoo, I showed the children how to attach the wool roving and spin it. We even managed to attach more wool when we ran out,now the thread is by no means even but it is spun and holds it spin??? I have no idea if that is the correct terminology but you get my drift. We will use this thread in our weaving which we start tomorrow.