Making costumes continues

The students are well into making their costumes. It is very important to sit down and reassess the progress made at the beginning of each session. This helps focus the students and they are able to set plans and goals for work to achieve in the session. This part of the day has focused the students and reduced them jumping from one thing to another and/or not completing parts of the costume. Likewise at the end of the day they write a reflection on their performance (did they achieve their goals), the problems they en-counted and how they solved them.

Confidence is growing when using the sewing machine, hand sewing and gluing. The students are now helping each other with advice on how to do things, reinforcing boxes, sewing flowers, weaving and doing paper mache.

The work goes on...

Started making costumes

The children chose the learn to sew by hand or knit. We spent the first half to the morning learning our new skill. The sewing was done with sacking and wool. Most children mastered that well and even sewed on buttons. Two girls persevered with the knitting and even taken it home.

Several children were shown how to weave flax flowers, after they had a lesson in the flax family, who to cut and how. They found the weaving quite hard and will have to be shown again.

I was able to conference with each group and focus them on the tasks or objects they need to make first. The room was a mess, but everyone was engaged in making. A very busy hum filled the room. At the end of the day some of the groups had achieved learning a new skill and putting it into practice making part of the costume. One group spent all day making a mask only to have it collapse because it was not reinforced adequately. Great learning curve for those two.