Beechcroft Worshop 1 - Fringing and Tie Dying Tshirts

Today marked the first day of the workshops working with a year 5 class at Beechcroft primary school in Weymouth. First of all, the carrying of the materials was a nightmare! Already I can see that this will be a regular occurance everytime I do one of these lessons as for each lesson preparations need to be made which are a lot to carry into the school. This is something I will learn for future projects - do as much work inside of the school premises as possible. However, because of my design and to make it the most successful  structure it wouldn't of been possible for the children to do it ALL themselves so prior preparation) of the wire collars and masks for example) was necessary but means that every lesson I will have loads to bring with me! oops! 


Started the lesson off with an introduction of myself and the project, showing the children my design which went down extremely well! They were all very enthusiastic about the design which was great ! and then I got out my prototype out and asked for a volunteer to try it on and that went down even better! This was a good move - to show them the final outcome - as it gave them something to look forward to and strive towards. 


This session was focused on fringing the T-shirts on the sleeves and the bottoms first of all. I was very shocked at the ability of each child and how much it varied between them all, as some of them found the cutting of the fringing really easy and finished in no time whereas some of them found it hard to grasp cutting a straight line! The teacher had warned me of the spectrum of ability in the class but didn't realise how severe it actually was. Tying knots in the fringing was exactly the same! To overcome this I got those that had finished theirs to help their classmates which worked well. One thing I have learnt already is to never assume what kids can do! Once all those that were struggling recived help from their peers it was fine and had 29 finished fringed and knotted Tshirts ready for dying....

The Tie-dying technique I decided to use with the children was the one where you insert ping pong balls inside of the T-Shirt and using elastic bands or string secure them in and then using the spray bottles with different colored greens and yellows , spray the Tshirts at different points so it makes the overall look more interesting. Once dyed they create circles of different sizes. I thought this would be a more fun technique to do with the students as it takes more time and more thought goes into it rather than the standard dunking into dye.

 The children found this a lot easier than the task before. It was a chance for them to get very very messy (too messy in fact! as some decided to rip their aprons!) but the spray bottles were definitely a good idea as they could customize them in their own way. I have noticed that this is what children seem to like - creative freedom. So giving them tasks where all their creations can be varied was a good choice that I made.... 

I would say a very successful workshop today! The project seems to have been very well received by both the students and teachers and the excitement from everyone is more than I could of hoped for! It was definitely a confidence boost for my personal project and hope that the forthcoming lessons will be as well received :) For the next session I will consider the timings and how long I think this ability group of children will take to complete all tasks necessary (especially considering I have 4 whole lessons, I dont want the children to become bored or pushed for time).