I was asked to be an artist during Art Week, one of my favorite weeks at my children's school. This year I decided to focus on weaving with recycled materials since it was so successful during Peace Village last summer. I taught the students to weave with t-shirts, plastic bags and on CD's.
Art Week is a week devoted to arts and crafts. Each student spends 4 half days working with one artist and creating 4 crafts. This gives the students a chance to learn one art form in depth and create 4 smaller craft projects during the week. The students get to vote on the type of art they would like to learn. This year there was print making, ceramics, tai-chi, drumming, painting and weaving.
My group started the week weaving with t-shirts on cardboard looms. This was the same project we did at Peace Village.
The best part about this project was that all kids (Kindergarten through 5th grade) were successful.
The next project was weaving with yarn on CD's. This proved a bit more difficult than t-shirt weaving, but the students worked hard and made beautiful pieces of art.
CD weaving was a way to use up the balls of yarn from previous projects.
I wanted find a project that could make use of plastic bags. I cut plastic grocery bags in to 2 inch strips and had the students weave them into plastic fencing I bought from Home Depot. Some students wove a mat, while others folded and sewed their mats into wallets.
The final day of Art Week was a time to finish up projects. The students who finished early worked together to create a collaborative piece of art. The only instruction I gave them was to recreate a painting as a weaving. I gave them a stack of paintings to choose from and set them free to create. I provided a sack full of materials to weave with including ribbon, raffia, tshirt scraps, yarn and plastic. We did not have enough time to complete a group weaving, but I loved what they were able to accomplish together in a short time.
