Classroom activity Grade 1 Art & Music
Weaving a Rain Curtain for Starflower School's Window
A 40-minute grade 1 weaving activity where students measure blue paper strips in whole squares, then weave over and under to build a class rain curtain.
Objectives
- Students will measure a paper strip as a whole number of same-size squares.
- Students will weave strips over and under to fill a paper loom.
- Students will explain that the woven blue strips stand for falling rain.
Vocabulary
Key words: weave, loom, strip, unit
Teacher overview
Weaving is one of the few art techniques that fails visibly when a student stops paying attention, since a missed over-under shows up as a gap the moment the strip is pushed into place. That makes it a good grade 1 task and a good match for rain, which falls in long lines a woven strip imitates well. Each student weaves one small panel of blue strips into a gray loom, and the panels tape together into a single curtain hung across a classroom window at the made-up Starflower School.
The measuring step comes before the weaving and is not decoration. Students lay same-size paper squares end to end along a blue strip, count them, and write the number on the back of the strip, which is the whole of the grade 1 length standard: a length is a count of same-size units laid with no gaps and no overlaps. Students who leave spaces between the squares get a smaller count than their neighbors holding the same strip, and comparing two such counts out loud is the fastest correction available.
Pre-cut the looms. Fold each sheet in half, cut slits from the fold to about a thumb's width from the open edge, and leave them folded until students take them. Cutting looms during the activity swallows the working time.
Activity Directions
- Before the activity, cut one loom per student and one set of six blue strips per student. Put ten paper measuring squares in a cup at each pair of seats. Tape a finished sample panel where the class can see it.
- Gather the class for five minutes. Ask where rain comes from before it falls, and take three answers, landing on the sun warming water, water rising, and clouds holding it until it falls. Hold up the sample panel and say that the blue strips are the rain and the gray loom is the sky behind it.
- Model the measuring at the front. Lay squares end to end along one blue strip, touching but not stacked, and count them aloud. Then deliberately leave gaps between two squares, count again, and ask the class which count is right and why.
- Give pairs eight minutes to measure. Each student measures three of their six strips, writes the number of squares on the back of each, and compares counts with their partner. Any two strips of the same length should get the same number, which is the check.
- Model the weave next. Push the first strip over the first slit, under the second, over the third, and so on, then push it up to the uncut border at the top of the loom. Start the second strip under instead of over, so the pattern shifts by one. Chant "over, under" with the class while you work.
- Give students fifteen minutes to weave all six strips into their loom. Circulate and look for two problems: strips started the same way as the one above, which makes a striped block instead of a weave, and strips left loose in the middle. Press each finished panel flat and put a dot of glue on the two outside strips to hold them.
- Tape the panels together edge to edge in rows and hang the finished curtain across a window with string. Move to the debrief when the curtain is up.
- Debrief in front of the window with two questions: "What do the blue strips stand for, and what is behind them?" and "Why did we count squares with no gaps between them?" Take two answers to each and leave the curtain up through the rainy season. End the activity about forty minutes from the start.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Give a loom with wider slits and only three strips to weave, and start the first strip for the student so there is a model to follow directly. For the measuring step, tape the squares into a single strip of ten so the student lines up one piece instead of managing ten loose ones.
Extension
Ask students to weave a second panel using two different strip widths and describe the pattern that results, or to measure a strip with two sizes of square and explain why the counts differ even though the strip did not change. Some students can plan a panel where the strips get shorter toward the bottom, like rain thinning out.
ELL supports
Chant "over, under" as a class with the arm motion before any strip is touched, since the two words carry the whole technique. Provide a measuring card showing squares laid correctly and squares laid with gaps, marked with a simple yes and no. Accept the debrief answers in short phrases or in a student's home language, and restate them in English for the class.
Extensions
Hang the curtain where afternoon light comes through so students can see the woven gaps glow, then ask them to draw what the window looks like from their own seat. A second panel woven with gray strips on a blue loom, hung beside the first, gives the class a quick comparison of figure and background without any new technique to learn.