Sunday, March 20, 2016

Fraction Pillows (1st-5th)








Whew- we are wrapping up spring break and I realize that I haven't posted about projects we made back in November......

Luckily I already wrote up a description of this project for our S.M.A.T.H. night where these fraction pillows were displayed so I'm just going to cut and paste ;).



Art and math intersect almost continuously although it usually goes unnoticed. For this project we focused on quilting and emphasized how much quilting involves using fractions to build a quilt design. The hope is for the students to independently see math concepts in much of the art that they make.

First we reviewed or were introduced to fractions based on their grade level standards. We completed worksheets for practice before we worked with the fabric. Next we collected our fabric and planned our quilt design on a template. Some grades were given a fraction and had to create their design around that fraction. Other grades created their design first and then worked with the fractions within their design when it was complete. Finally, we adhered their fabric down to our quilt square and then stuffed our pillows!

2 comments:

  1. These are Fabulous! What a great idea to teach fractions. May I ask how the children adhered their fabric to the quilt square? Did you sew up the final seam? I'd love to try this sometime. Thanks!

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  2. Thank you! Each child did one small square (individually) and we turned the square into a mini pillow. The pillows are about 5 inches square. I used both HeatNBond iron on adhesive and spray fabric adhesive to adhere the fabric pieces to the squares. HeatNBond holds better but it is more time consuming than the fabric adhesive spray. The older children stitched their own pillows shut but I did it for the younger grades ;).

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