Felt! Stress-less Ball

Oh how I LOVE felt!

I discovered it over a year ago and am amazed at the limitless amount of items that can be crafted from pieces of dyed, carded wool. Be prepared to see many more felt projects created by kids on my blog in the near future.

Since, in this class, I have so many different age groups (from 3 to 8), I decided the first project would be a basic one.

During the games at the beginning of class, I use this little ball to roll to the children:

It's also very nice to squeeze or roll gently in little hands as a type of "stress ball" - hence the name I've come up with "Stress-less Ball"

It was originally made as one of 3 juggling balls by my boyfriend at a festival last year. We met a lovely woman called Emma who taught us how to felt all types of things - juggling balls being one of them.

Just look at all the pretty colours we get to work with today!

Our supplies: The inner ball is made with balloons filled with rice. 1 container hot soapy water, 1 container cold water, laundry tablet bags, Carded dyed wool in layers

The children learned the wool came from sheep, shorn by the farmer, dyed by Kerry Woolen Mills in their factory, posted to me - now ready to be made by the children into felt.

They learned that felt is created by relaxing the fibres of the wool in warm soapy water- like you'd relax in a nice warm bubble bath - scrubbing it between your hand to bind and shrink the fibres. Then you shock the fibres to stick together by putting them into cold water. Needless to say they had great fun with this imagery - I was very pleased that I had plenty of towels and a mop to hand as some imaginations went into overdrive!

Hot, Cold, Scrub, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink.....

TA-DAH!

They also made felt stringy-thingys to tie on their wrists, around their neck or attached to a hairslide and wear in their hair like a dread-lock! This is simply felt rolled in the soapy water, then cold and repeated until fibres are bound together.

And there you have it - the first of many felting projects - Good, clean, wet FUN!

Next week.....willow framed Dream-catchers & Soul Shields!

Colour Mixing - Like Magic!

A few classes ago, when the children were using paint, you will recall that they experimented with colour mixing themselves. As a result, all colours were mixed together and the children discovered that they had created a sludgy brown.

Following on from this experience, I thought it would be a good idea to teach the children how to mix primary colours properly.

Mixing colours is one of the most important lessons we can learn about art. Once you know what colours mix to make others, you can shade, lighten and add dimension to your artwork. It's a lesson that I hope will stay with these children for life.

The children were taught that the primary colours are....Yellow, Blue and Red. They can be mixed together to make other colours.

Here are some of their colour mixing sheets:

They also learned that mixing white with other colours makes them lighter. It was fun to hear the children exclaim when they discovered what new colours they had created.

For the next part of the class, I did cheat a little and gave the children some extra pretty colours to work with....just to add a little more colour to their artwork.

They saw how the colours mixed in their fold-in-half butterflies.....

And experimented with finger painting on their colourful Alien creatures planets.....

All of these works of art have been safely added to their Art Portfolios which they will bring home with them at the end of term as a nice reminder of what they learned in art class!

Next week.....the children will make felt! Be prepared for a soapy, fun blog!