By Nandini Bhattacharjya, Head Teacher, and Betsy Koning, Teacher
One cold morning in late fall, a group of children in West AM began to industriously wrap yarn around a tree trunk. The teachers had recently observed children using spools of yarn found in open bins of materials in the design area in a variety of ways, but this was out of the ordinary. This child-led activity reminded the teachers of the book Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, which was read for the following week’s story time. Inspired by the book’s main character Annabelle, more children began to wind yarn around the tree and talk about how the yarn was keeping the tree warm on the chilly mornings.
The next week, to honor and encourage their interest in this activity, we gave the children an opportunity to engage with these materials on a smaller scale by providing them with a variety of twigs and yarn at the art table. After working on this project, children spontaneously began searching for twigs in our yard, then found string at the design table and continued experimenting with wrapping. At this point in our process, we had reached the winter break and wondered what would happen when we returned to school after three weeks.
As the children returned to school in the new year, the teachers set up an array of activities involving string to determine if the interest from fall was still present, and if so, to further explore uses for this material with them. The teachers provided opportunities for the class to try out a “phone” made of tin cans and string. Our music specialist introduced the idea of string instruments like the ukulele and violin, which gave rise to a whole new type of woodworking project incorporating string and wire. We used yarn in the water table to show how water would wick along it following the fibers.
As children participated in various string-centered activities, we observed that they were particularly motivated by two uses for this material: wrapping string around something and threading it through holes. We heard comments like, “This feels like knitting,” and “You can put string through the holes.” Teachers brainstormed ideas for more projects to incorporate these activities and to help make children aware of other ways they could use string.
One of the children pointed out, “We can fly a kite with string.” So out in the yard, teachers offered triangular construction paper, masking tape, string, and hole punchers, and children created colorful kites. They ran across the yard with their kites tethered to a string happily watching them flutter and spin. Some who chose to add a very long string to their kite found it was helpful to wrap their strings around a craft stick to create something like a spool. Singing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” at story time provided a chance to highlight this activity and share samples of the children’s work with the whole class.
During the same week, we offered a large-scale communal weaving project in the art area. We used garden netting as a base structure, and children wove colored string, yarn, and ribbon through the holes. Children enjoyed this free-form style of weaving. As they cut long pieces of string and stretched their arms (in some cases walking across the room) to pull them through the grid, we saw them using both fine- and gross-motor skills.
As children demonstrated their delight in threading string through openings, we provided a variety of small materials with holes that could be strung on a length of baker’s twine, such as beads, small sections of paper straws, coiled pipe cleaners, lacy pieces of a balsa wood fan, and craft foam shapes. The children threaded these onto the string to create jewelry, keychains, crowns, decorations, and fishing poles. Some created repeating patterns or sorted through all the baskets to find a favorite material or color.
While talking about uses for fibers, children also pointed out that spiders use a type of “string” to make their webs. They began to make spiders and webs out of art materials, showing an interest in nature’s most skillful weavers. To support and encourage the children’s interest in this topic, we decided to read The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. We introduced pictures of different kinds of spider webs, and the children were intrigued by the variety of patterns and structures. They learned that a single web might contain different types of sticky thread, and that each category of web captures prey differently. The children studied the images and started to follow the lines of the webs to make their own versions with white string and double-sided tape. Eric Carle’s story also lends itself to being acted out as a play, and many children attached strings to themselves so that they could pretend to be spiders in their dramatic play. At music time we used string to make a spider’s web and played a game where children pretended to be flies trying to pass through a web without getting caught.
Next, we dedicated time to learning how yarn is made into practical items like clothing to see if the children were interested in the process of knitting. The book Noodle’s Knitting by Sheryl Webster and Caroline Pedler seemed to be a perfect choice for introducing this concept. Like Noodle, the main character who diligently knits throughout the story, one of the teachers started to knit a scarf from a ball of wool in the classroom. Children were fascinated to see how the ball of wool was slowly transformed into a scarf using knitting needles. Each morning they enthusiastically came to check if the length of the scarf was increasing. This led us to measure the knitting project at the beginning and end of each session. Children remarked animatedly, “It’s getting so long,” “It’s getting longer and longer! Keep knitting!”
Some children learned to finger-knit without needles and were proud of their finished projects that included items like scarves and snakes. Their interest in knitting led us to explore how yarn is made from sheep’s wool. We wanted to examine the steps involved in making fleece into a ball of yarn. Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep by Teri Sloat helped us learn the process in an amusing way.
Toward the end of the quarter, we offered children an opportunity to experiment with wire. They found that although it came wound on a spool like string, its properties were quite different. It was less flexible but stronger and held its shape after using fingers or tools to form it into a shape. Using wire, they found new ways of making sculptures, jewelry, and wands.
We revisited the question: “What can you do with a string?” with the children throughout the quarter and used their answers to inspire new activities. We made a string trellis in the garden for the sweet peas to grow on and used geoboards to make designs with yarn by wrapping it around rows of nails hammered into wood. Out in the sand area, we explored suspending objects in the air with string, an activity that started out as an attempt to give toy farm animals a ride on a swing and expanded to hanging planets from our willow tree and inventing and then playing a game resembling tetherball. As we gave children occasions to use “string and things,” we saw them start to use string fringed skirts, string hats, purses with handles, stringy tails for ponies, and leashes for their stuffed animals. As Rafaela aptly noted, “A string is long, it’s stretchy and you can knot it. You can wrap a tree with it and make a loopty-loop with it. You can do so many things with it.”
We were delighted to observe the children demonstrating their ability to differentiate between string, yarn, wire, ribbon, and pipe cleaners. For our two-week-long culminating project consisting of small individual weavings, they chose among these materials and found a host of creative ways to use them. We were reminded, as we watched them cut both short and long pieces of the materials and use them with intention, of the words from Just How Long Can a Long String Be?! by Keith Baker: “A string is just as long as you need it to be.”