Stuffed felt animals from Miller and Morrison's classes (Jr. Great Books extension)

Loved, loved ,loved this felt animal project that I did with my son's first grade class. I was able to read one of the stories out of his Jr. Great Books manual and I absolutely LOVED the story. Its a folk tale from India, "The Mouse and the Wizard".



After the class had read, discussed  and studied the story with their teachers, I was able to follow up with this extension activity. We talked about inferring while we are reading and the emotions of the characters. The children picked one of the characters from the folk tale and recreated the character with felt. The challenge was to infer from the text what emotion the character was feeling and try to show that feeling in their stuffed animal.
The results were precious!!

Preliminary sketch of the character they chose from the story.

Starting to cut pieces of felt.

Constantly using our preliminary sketches as our guides.

GLOWING! Our glow in the dark stuffed animals.

Finally! Our completed bioluminescent, glow in the dark stuffed animals!

After everything was painted and sewn on, we stitched the stuffed animals together on the sewing machine. I tried to have every child help me press the pedal but unfortunately time wouldn't allow me to do every one at school. We stitched the "right" sides together, left a small hole, flipped them right side out and then they stuffed and stitched the hole closed. I wish I could show all of them here. The final pieces are really precious and well thought out!!!

 

 

Ah! Some of my fabulous sewing moms/partners who came for 2 days straight to help sew during class. I'm so grateful for our amazing families at school!!!