Lots of weaving

In my classroom I have taken away the early practical life activities and started to put more advanced work. I started the class with simple practical life activities for a reason you can read about in this post and this post. I no longer need the simple activities any more, but practical life is still equally important for older children. Over the next few weeks I will be adding many interesting advanced practical life activities, some indoors and some outdoors. I will try to post about as many as I can.

To start off, weaving has been a big hit with the boys. The first picture shows a circular weaving loom, I like this as it is short and simple so a child could maybe finish it in a day or two. This loom makes really cute weaved circles perfect for coasters. I bought mine for 20p but I am sure that you can easily make one at home.

This is a wooden weaving loom that I bought for £1 and its perfect. Really well made and simple to work with. One of the older boys [8yrs] sat and weaved for 30mins! We haven't completed a mat yet, so I am excited to see their faces once I take the mat of the loom.

You can easily make a loom and I blogged about the ones I made years ago here. These are nice because each child can have their own loom. Unfortunately only a few children actually finished their work, so we had many unfinished looms in the classroom. The wooden loom pictured above is for collective work, all children get to do a bit and when its finished we will use the mat in my classroom.

Years ago we also made felt weaved mats which the children took to display at home. The instructions for them are here.