Weaving Fish

I have seen something like this on pinterest, although it was not traditional weaving.  But, I thought what a great way to introduce weaving to kids.  It is small and they only have to go a few lines.  Their looms are original, and quite frankly just cute.  

You can see below I had my 6 year olds doing this, and they did great.  In school, we usually don't introduce weaving until 4th grade (yarn/loom).  But, this little project really opened my eyes that they should be at least trying this much sooner.  Even if it is one of the large looms that individuals can take a turn at.   I always think about doing one of the big box looms and it just doesn't ever happen.  This may be the year!

We used cardboard from cereal boxes, they designed the fish with pencil first, they cut out images once checked. Each child was asked to use 2/3 colors to paint their fish (acrylic paints).  As they were working on another project I cut the spaces for the loom.  Once they were dry and all cut, I demonstrated how to wrap the looms, the assistants/myself helped younger kiddos with this step.  Then, we tied yarn and threaded the needle.  After this step, I demonstrated the weaving process and went over key vocabulary and finally they were on their way to weaving.   I had to back track a few of the younger kids, but once they got a one on one, they were off running.