Last term with KS1 art club (5-7 year olds), we undertook a short project to learn some simple weaving techniques.

I think weaving is a really important and useful skill for children to learn early on in primary school. KS1 is probably the perfect time to introduce this as most children have developed the fine motor skills required. With children of this age, I find paper weaving the most accessible technique and one which also helps them to begin to understand some basic colour theory as they consider which colours to combine.

Just as I was planning this activity, I visited our city art gallery here in Sheffield – The Graves Gallery. They had a fantastic exhibition of Lubna Chowdhary’s work on display. Her work combines all kinds of different media and techniques including work with pottery and metal. Part of the show included these interesting woven pieces. She had used a shiny textured paper to weave together in to different patterns and into a cube shape. Although there was no colour contrast, the texture and reflective surface of the paper created it’s own contrast between the different woven rows.

When introducing weaving, I also like to show children the beautiful patterns created by African artists such as this Kente cloth from Ghana. Its colour combinations are very vibrant and contrast more strongly.

This is the simple approach I taught children to follow. I always create an example and guide them, modeling each step. Here is a link to the Google Slides I used – please make a copy of these if you wish to use them. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/126MOTgZIztJvpz7Y5ONkJWfutOxkJW9ENkKyWerMSG0/edit?usp=sharing

KS1 children tend to struggle with the accurate measuring and cutting involved but this is just about the right level of difficulty. I encourage them to use the width of the ruler as a guide to get their lines evenly spaced and with some trial and error they get this. There is also always at least one child who cuts from the outside edge of their piece of paper instead of from the fold creating a lovely bit of fringing! It’s one of those lessons that’s easily fixed by trying again. Some children also struggle with understanding that to create this basic basket weave, they must do the opposite each time, e.g. if they start under with one row then next time they need to start over. By the end of the project though they all have usually got it. I introduce the terms warp and weft during the project. The warp is the lines that are cut into the loom, the weft are the pieces that get woven across.

With this grasped they can then experiment with different weaving patterns or try some op art type woven pieces where the warp is stretched.

This then prepares them for KS2 when I introduce weaving using wool and a cardboard loom.

If you’ve found this post useful, you might want to check out the other activities that I have posted in my blog. You can also subscribe to hear get further ideas and inspiration as I post them!