After our weaving last Tuesday, we decided to give it another go, but this time we chose card for the warp and weft. We chose card because it is stronger and easier to handle. The boys and girls made super weaves.

    

    

     

     

     

           

SESSION # 9.

This week we spent a substantial amount of time talking and communicating with one another, asking/answering questions,  sharing ideas and opinions, building vocabulary and knowledge, and using our THINKING SKILLS.

We began by recapping on last week’s theme – birds, nests and webs.

We thought about how a spider makes a web. What material does it use?

Natalia said that it looked like thread.

Eirinn said it was like a pattern.

Vanya said that she noticed how smart robins are when they wait in the background when people disturb soil when they walk across it…..the robins see this as an opportunity to scrap around for worms in the disturbed soil!

We looked at the trees again which were covered in spiders’ webs and this led to images of Christo and Jean Claude’s work. Had these artists been inspired by spiders to cover the buildings and landscapes which have made them so famous?

Christo was born in Bulgaria and his wife Jeanne Claude was born in Morocco on the same day! They were environmental artists.

   

    

         

        

   

   

How do they do that?

We noticed that the fabric was held in place, but by what?

Was it thread, or perhaps rope?

We talked about cocoons and wondered if there were any animals which use thread?

Abigail said that a caterpillar uses thread.

Grace thought that a caterpillar used leaves.

Pearse said that they use string from their body.

Ronan suggested that they used wood from a tree.

We talked about these ideas…..and Vanya said that Ronan was maybe thinking about the way in which a cocoon is attached to the branch of a tree while the butterfly forms inside it.

Do these animals have to eat something in order to make the thread? We talked about how wasps use paper to produce beautiful nests…and paper is made from wood, so there is definitely a connection.

Vanya asked the children if they knew what silk is.

Pearse said that it is smooth, like a type of leather.

Roise said it is a fabric.

Eirinn said that it is like a wedding dress or a christening gown.

Amyleigh said that her sister’s Communion dress was made of silk.

We talked about the properties of silk. It is strong and soft and it changes from cold to warm depending on the climate.

Vanya showed another image and asked the boys and girls to guess what it was.

Amyleigh – snow.

Jessica – a ball.

Pearse – an x-ray baby in its Mummy’s tummy.

Roise – a dandelion seed head.

Eirinn – 2 balls of fluff.

Juliette – a Communion hat.

Caoimhe – a cobweb.

Grace – the moon.

Hayden – an egg.

Mrs.Harriott – It reminds me of candy floss.

Joshua – I see a black thing inside it. (Well spotted Joshua!)

Vanya told us that it was silk thread and she drew a line around the outline of the thing that was in the centre. It was a silk worm!

      

To make a piece of silk would have involved an awful lot of tiny little worms! How big would the worms be? We guessed what size they were.

Then Vanya showed us some images of amazing creations – (nests that South American bees create with beautiful flower petals. They lay their eggs in them.)

    

                  

Vanya asked if anyone could guess what these things were made of.

Christopher said they looked like painted fabric, while Natalia thought they looked like painted paper or flowers.

Joshua said they looked like coloured thread.

Question: Who or what made these objects?

Christopher – God.

Conor – A wasp.

Hayden – Chantalle Coombes.

Ronan – It is a spider’s web painted.

Jessica – A bee. A cocoon is small and a bee is small.

Question: What could you put inside it?

Natalia said, A bee.”

• Bumble bees make the pods like rucksacks and lay their eggs inside.

Vanya told us that she has bumble bees in her garden. They lay their eggs in many different places, whereas honey bees lay their eggs together in one place. Vanya knows so much, she’s like Wikipedia!

The idea of putting something inside something else led to the idea of investigating SOLID and HOLLOW. You can put something inside a hollow, but you can’t put anything inside a solid.

Vanya showed us 2 items she’d found at home. The first thing was a SOLID stone which her niece had painted, and the second thing was a HOLLOW toilet roll core.

     

      

We had a SOLID and HOLLOW HUNT around the classroom.

Then we made 2 lists – things which are solid and things that are hollow.

SOLID                                                                                  HOLLOW

Dillon H found a plastic lid.                                      Aine found a sweetie box.

Ronan said -the glass in the window.                      Amyleigh got a water bottle.

Christopher showed us his glasses/spectacles.   Dillon RD got a pencil case and

Daniel got a white board.                                                                 a lunch box.

Then we broadened our search from our CLASSROOM to the WORLD.

SOLID                                            HOLLOW

Stones                                                An aeroplane

Rock                                                   A bus

Metal                                                 A whale

An iceberg                                         A ship

Mountains                                        A house

A cake                                                A school

Wood                                                 A helicopter

Paper                                                 A bee hive

A carrot                                             Tyres

Ice                                                       An apple

Concrete                                            An orange

The floor                                           A purse

The Antarctic                                   A toilet roll holder

A glass table                                      A school bag

A mirror/ a door                               A lunch bag/box

Then we thought: Can some things be SEMI-SOLID? A brick?

• Feel your hand……………….It feels…………………….SOLID.
• Your nose, mouth, ears…………………………………….HOLLOW.
• Your body is mostly…………………………………………HOLLOW.
• A balloon is ……………………………..,,,,….SOLID and HOLLOW.
• A cup is HOLLOW, but the material it is made of is…SOLID.
• ……………………………………………………………………………………
• What can we do to see if something is solid or hollow? We can knock on it and the sound we hear is an indication. Let’s try this on different objects in our classroom:
• Cardboard box – HOLLOW.
• Tin box – HOLLOW.
• Pritt stick – SOLID.
• MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS:

SOLID                             HOLLOW

A chime bar                       VIOLIN –Christopher

DRUMS- Jessica 

TRUMPET – Conor

GUITAR – Michael

RECORDER – Daniel

FLUTE – Jamie

WHISTLE – Caiomhe

HORN – Pearse

UKELELE/UKULELE – Amyleigh

SEMI-SOLID:

PIANO – Demi-Leigh

KEYBOARD – Grace

NEXT………….Vanya showed us this image:

HOW MYSTERIOUS! It looked like the artist had wrapped up an object, but what was inside it?

No one knows because it was taken apart and the contents were never revealed, but some people think it might have been a sewing machine. Vanya asked the children for their ideas.

Natalia thought it was a pen.                                               Roise said it was a jigsaw piece.

Ronan thought it was a small mountain.                          Eirinn – an anvil.

Abigail thought it might be a brick under a black quilt.                  Aine – a statue.

Grace thought it was a web and a cliff.                                                Juliette said – a rock.

Christopher thought it was a cloak with something underneath it.        Caiomhe – a rock.

Joshua – a statue of a dog’s head.                    Hayden – a black sheet with a stone under it.

Pearse said it reminded him of a mini Statue of Liberty.                          Ciaran – a peg leg.

Molly said she thought it was a rock.                Conor thought it was a trophy wrapped up.

Mrs. Harriott thought it looked like a pirate hat.

   

Then Vanya showed us two more very interesting and colourful objects that had been wrapped up.

She decided to have a go at wrapping something and we had to guess what was inside the parcel. She used a piece of fabric and tied it together with elastic bands.

   

Then Vanya unwrapped the parcel to show what she had inside the fabric: the rock her niece had painted, a wooden spoon and a hair clip.

     

I said her parcel reminded me of a mummified Egyptian cat. This is how ideas spark off other ideas……………As quick as a wink, Vanya flashed these images in front of our eyes:

  

   

HOLD ON A MINUTE………………..DID THE EGYPTIANS WEAVE THOSE COVERS? Yes, they certainly did.

Some children have seen mummies in the Ulster Museum. Thousands of years ago, the Ancient Egyptians mummified things that were precious to them.

This led to our final activity of the session:

TASK: Wrap several items, (one large and one or two small) in fabric and tie together to make a “parcel.” Choose your own fasteners – sellotape, masking tape, elastic bands, strips of coloured paper.

The boys and girls had painted the fabric squares which Vanya had previously sent. We chose pastel colours, in the style of the South American bumble bees’ petal nests. We noticed that the untreated fabric was soft and smooth, but when the painted fabric was dry, it had changed to a coarse touch, and some squares had changed shape.

The boys and girls wanted to show the painted fabric to Vanya. She told them that lots of artists use a fabric called CANVAS to paint on.

    

      

LET THE TASK BEGIN.

Here are the children engrossed in problem solving:

• What will I wrap?
• How will I get all the items to fit inside the fabric?
• What will I use to secure them?
• Which side is the painted side of the fabric?
• Do I need help to secure everything?

        

       

                 

                   

    

The children wanted to show Vanya what they’d made:        

        

   

    

   

   

Someone decided to put a handle on their parcel, and then it was HANDLE FEST!

Here are the “parcels” that the boys and girls created:

    

   

   

   

   

   

        

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

Our last Virtual session had come to an end!!!!!

Next week Vanya is coming for a real visit, and she’s staying all day. We are also going to have a PARTY to celebrate everything we’ve done together.

We don’t know what we’re doing except for the fact that the boys and girls have been asked to bring in old tee shirts?????

After lunch we decided to go outside and hang our parcels/cocoons on a little tree. We chose a short one so that everyone would be able to reach a branch.

      

     

      

      

       

      

       

      

It was like dancing round a May Pole, only a lot shorter.

As we say in Holland………………..TOT ZIENS.