Quaint Quilts
Piecing Together a Cozy Unit
When we return from the lazy days of Christmas break in the midst of winter's chill, a warm,cozy unit is in order. Not only are quilts a comfy theme, they also allow the integration of literature, math, social studies, cooking and more!
Welcome to our world of quilts!
The two major big books we use during our unit are:
Lazy Mary retold by June Melser
The Magic Quilt by Blair Thompson
We also read Eight Hands Round(a quilt alphabet book), The Quilt by Ann Jonas, The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco and A Quilt Story.
Activities related to Lazy Mary include:
1. Reading and discussing the story. Have the kids ever felt lazy and not wanted to get up out of bed? What happened?
2. Write a class book based on the story. The kids wrote:
Lazy __________will you get up?
Will you , will you?
Will you get up?
Lazy ________ will you get up?
Will you get up today?
They filled in the blank with their names and drew a picture of themselves on a lazy day.
3. We used a nine patch pattern for the kids to design their own quilt squares to tell about themselves. They wrote their names in the middle and on each of the other squares drew something that was important to them.
4. We made a graph entitled "What wakes you up?". The kids drew a picture of what or who usually woke them up. Answers varied from people to animals to the sun. Most of us were awakened by other people.
5. We looked at some real quilts. I have a Sunbonnet Sue quilt that is important to me because it was made at a quilting bee and my great grandmother created and signed one of the blocks. I have a couple of quilt tops, one that I made that I showed the kids. They enjoyed looking at them and hearing the stories behind them.
6. Visit quilts in the virtual world at:
Grandmother's Quilts.
Activities related to The Magic Quilt:
1. In this story a little girl misses her absent mom and her grandmother helps her to make a quilt from her mother's clothes to comfort her. The story never really states where her mother is, but I and most of the children I have read the story with believe that she has died. This is a theme that brings up quite a bit of discussion and there are interesting vocabulary words to explain to the kids.
2. Listen for the rhythm in the story and identify the rhyming words.
3. This is a good book to work on recognizing Q, q and /q/.
4. The print in the book includes the "fancy a and g". I point this out to my kids and they seem to enjoy learning to recognize "a" and "g" in this other typeface.
5. We wrote about our "dreams for the world" and discuss different meanings for the word "dream".
6.This, of course, leads to discussing Martin Luther King, Jr. and reading several books about him including Happy Birthday, Martin(Scholastic) and I Have a Dream, which is an exerpt of his famous speech, illustrated in a big book format (Sundance Publishers).
7. Visit Martin Luther King, Jr. in the virtual world. Try these sites:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Photos
Martin Luther King, Jr. Soundbites
A Timeline of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Other quilt ideas:
1. Read The Quilt and discuss the story. We have a math kit from Lakeshore with rubber quilt pieces and four story mats to build your own quilt patterns.
2. Use the quilt squares for graphing. Each child should take a small handful of quilt squares and graph the pieces. Which is more and which is less?
3. Read and discuss The Keeping Quilt talk about how the quilt is was important and how it helped the author learn about her family. Also, the kids enjoyed discussing all the different uses for the quilt that were in the story. They were especially interested in the fact that it was a true story.
4. We read Eight Hands Round and made our own alphabet quilt. Each child chose a letter of the alphabet and colored a the corresponding quilt pattern which I traced from the book. The quilt square was glued onto a piece of construction paper, with the die cut letter and another square with the name of the quilt. Then all of the quilt squares were put in order on a large piece of bulletin board paper and displayed in the hallway.
5. Make a class quilt. Last year each child drew a picture of him/herself and I scanned them into the computer, added a border around each picture and printed them onto t-shirt transfer paper. The pictures were ironed on to muslin in a quilt pattern.
This year the children laid on the floor to make each capital letter of the alphabet and I snapped photos of them with my digital camera. I will border each one and print on t-shirt transfer paper to iron onto muslin. I expect that the kids will enjoy seeing this quilt as well.
Make edible quilt squares using graham crackers, frosting and sprinkles. The kids decorated the crackers with the frosting tubes and sprinkes to look like quilt squares. The frosting tubes were somewhat difficult for little hands to manage. Another teacher in my building suggested putting the frosting in ziploc bags and sniping the corner to make frosting designs. I plan to try this next year.
Click on each picture to see a larger image!
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