Teaching wet felting to grade 3 and 4 students - finale

The wet part of the felting is all done!  I went to the class for the last time last week and helped some children finish off their work.  It was an end of term session where children could finish off any work they had.  Only a few wanted to thread the beads onto the cords.  It was quite hard to get the cord through the needle and into the balls, especially as the cords were of varying thicknesses.  But we managed. Wooden beads added to the effects.
As you can see, some of the children had planned well and had made a coloured balls that would make a pattern.  Others were happy with the randomness of what they had made.

Teaching wet felting to grade 3 and 4 students - part 3

I am remembering real teaching - how the best laid plans go awry.  Things to be dealt with: what to do with the few children who have finished the felting process; how to restart the felting process with the others, what to do with them when their work is felted as I think (hope!) that will happen fairly quickly; how to start off the children who have only done the laying out - yes, there are still some at that stage.
The plan had been to sew onto the felt, to emphasise the edges of the shapes and add highlights.  But they won't be able to do that if the felt is still damp, so we will have to do something else. Maybe I can revisit how I made felt beads and we can do that, then do the sewing the following week.  Or we might make some little 3D shapes, I'll have to experiment this week.  Thank goodness I am only doing it once a week and have time to remember how to do things - and how to manage a classroom.  I am enjoying it immensely but I am also getting a much greater appreciation of how hard it is for art teachers, so little time between one class and the next arriving, room needed to store works in progress, planning for students who finish early (or very slowly) and what they can do in such a limited space.

Yet another practice of felt balls and the cord.

Teaching wet felting to grade 3 and 4 students - part 2

Then for lesson two.
The work had to be redistributed, the demonstration done, the children who were absent last week given a very brief rundown of what they would do (this was a useful revision of last week) and the children set to work.
Much more running around this week!  The very thick pieces took ages to make really wet. In fact, I did things I would not have dreamt of showing the children normally. I picked up their work and flipped it over to see the back, to show them that it wasn't wet. We had the work sandwiched between the bubble wrap and the netting, so it stayed together well.

Things that I discovered: too much detergent will make the felting very slippery and hard to roll. You need to make the bubble wrap quite a bit larger than the paper we drew on - or make sure that the laying out of felt didn't go over the edge of the paper. Why? Because it was hard to roll bubble wrap around the stick before it got onto the wool. Both of these problems combined to make the bubble wrap and felt unravel, and wrinkle in some cases, and be quite hard to roll.  So, thinking on the run, I used the netting to wrap around the outside of the roll and it held it together much better. (I had decided not to use elastic bands around the ends of the sticks but may have to rethink that decision.)
Some of the designs were laid out close to the edge of the paper we used as our template. This meant that the design went over the edge a bit. We had different sorts of wool, in different microns.  I had meant to note that and get the children to see that the wool used makes a difference to the felting but that got lost in all the activity. However, we can pass them around when they are dry and see and feel the difference.  It will not be a controlled experiment because the children did not all lay out the same thicknesses of wool but it will let them see that felting is not an exact science - at least, not at our stage of development. We have samples that have shrunk much more than others and that are much thicker than others. So we will discuss this, and the uses each might be better for - mats, scarves, bags, coasters, etc.

Very different sizes from the same sized template.

The wool moved around before the felting, or early in the process.  And the folding-in of the edges wasn't entirely successful, that will be cut off.

The wool moved a little during the felting process and so the image is very close to the edge.

Because I had asked them not to start rolling till I had checked if the water had penetrated all layers, and they listened, there was a bit of a delay in getting some children to that point. But eventually everyone started rolling.
I had intended to rinse the soapy felt out in warm and then cold water but time got away from us.  So we just used the water we had and didn't change temperatures.  Not to worry, the felting was happening.
The children really enjoyed the part where you throw the felt down on the table.  Only a few got that far, so we will have to wet a lot of the pieces again next week and keep felting.

Teaching wet felting to grade 3 and 4 students - part 1

I thought I had it all under control - I had made lots of samples, worked out how I would do the felting and manage 25 - 30 children all at once.

The first week went ok - one grade was quite small as several children were absent.  This made is easier to get around to all the children and make sure they were going ok.  Of course, it also meant that there were 6 or so children there today who hadn't done the laying out of felt, while the rest were doing the felting.  Hmm.  Thank goodness I was only the visiting textile artist and the teacher could take that small group.
In the first lesson I gave the children a square piece of paper (A4 cut to be square), bubble wrap slightly larger and a piece of netting a similar size to the bubble wrap.
The children drew an outline of the fruit they were making.  Then they placed the bubble wrap on top and laid out the wispy bits of colour inside the lines of the image.

After that, they laid out the background colour.  It was a little tricky to explain that they had actually laid out their image from the back, that any highlights and special markings, would have to be done first, then the fruit shape laid on top.  But they managed it.

I demonstrated how to do the pulling out of the wispy bits of wool and how it needed three layers, at least, each at 90 degrees to each other (some maths thrown in there!).  But getting around a large group of children to make sure that they are not using too much wool (which was a much bigger problem than not enough) was an effort and, inevitably, some children have quite thick, and not that evenly distributed, wool.

We then laid some netting over the wool and gently rubbed it with our hands, to make the fibres cling together a bit. To keep it all together, we had a layer of bubble wrap, the wool, the netting and then their picture WITH THEIR NAMES ON on top.
It was then put carefully into a tub, ready for next week.
End of lesson one.