Learning how to sew

A lot of people are intimidated by the idea of sewing. I lucked out and had a mom and aunts who were really in to quilting and introduced it to me at an early age. So when I finally got the chance to begin my own classroom from scratch I obviously sewed A LOT! And because life gets in the way I still had a lot of sewing (or repairing!) to do when class actually began.

My first year I only had 6 three year olds in my room, and I was careful not to make myself too available to them, trying to encourage independence. With such a small number I had to make sure that I was pausing to do a lot of observing. To keep my watching from being too obvious I spent a lot of time sewing at one of our classroom floor tables. A lot of times the kids would wander over to see what I was making and it made for great observation practice.

I give this first year a lot of credit for turning out some great sewers in my classroom. Before I left Minnesota those original three year olds were confident kindergarteners and boy could they tackle some big projects! Here's a great example of what one accomplished with me simply planting the idea in her head and providing the materials.

Sewing her own globe was a 2 day project and took surprisingly little help from me. However there was a lot more prep work than just gathering the appropriate fabrics for her. Here's some of what we did over the three years to build up to this:

• Needle threading
  • An obvious first step! How can you sew if you can't thread a needle? As soon as I discovered how frustrating any sewing could be for a child who couldn't thread a needle I immediately madea  stand alone activity for practice threading a needle and handling a spool of thread
• Button sewing
  • A classic Montessori work. Over the year the children helped me sew snaps onto the classroom aprons, repair buttons that fell of pouches and even fixed a dressing frame! That's real practical life and purposeful work.
• Embroidery
  • Tracing metal insets onto fabric and practicing the basic running stitch was hugely important for any more advanced sewing. Button sewing introduces the basic up and down motion, but embroidery expands on following a line.
• Knot tying
  • Ok, so honestly we're still working this being an independent activity. I've tried to introduce this one using thicker thread and a big needle but still have yet to have a child who can honestly tie their own knots. Anyone care to give ME some tips?
• Pinning fabrics
  • We had some random felt board shapes laying around that I used. The idea that  the pins need to not only go through the fabric but come back up was the trickiest part!
• Pillow sewing
  • Puts together the idea of a running stitch, flipping fabrics inside out and then stuffing them! We also had a puppet making for those times stuffing was a bit hard to come by, lol!
• Puzzle tracing
  • How could you make a globe with all the continents without practicing tracing them in the first place?

And of course once one student had done it others wanted to make their own globe as well! We had a line-up for that work right through the end of the school year!

I've heard that Sewing in a Montessori Classroom is a great resource. Has anyone used this book before? Or have some other sewing activities they've found have been popular?