Clothing Unit Resources & Ideas!

Gloves, socks, caps, & mittens! It's that time of year again..practicing buttons, zipping zippers, and putting on jackets! Clothing is something students are quite familiar with and therefore makes a great stepping stone into many different ventures about clothing..where it comes from..how it's made..how is it cleaned..how it's different around the world..etc.  

A study on clothing can be tied into any center or interest area.  In previous years, my students have created a clothing store or shoe store in the pretend center to go along with the unit theme and to learn about real world experiences..click HERE to view. A laundry room is another great pretend center idea. Students can color sort clothes into baskets, practice hanging and ironing, and even washing in paper box washers/dryers.  In the discovery area we set up a provocation with costume books & clothing from around the world books, large paper doll cut outs (similar to gingerbread men), yarn, glue, and scrap fabric and scissors. The math center was very busy with button matching, color sorting, and size sorting. In ABC center students would match upper & lowercase felt clothing letters (pants & shirts) together. In blocks, we had a set of dollhouse dolls with clothes. Students built clothing stores after a virtual tour video we watched about a clothing store. 

See how we integrated art into our clothing unit HERE. Art is a great way to learn about different textures and textiles from around the world! Process art and recycling fit in nicely with this unit study as well! 

Looking for more clothing or laundry unit ideas? Check out these awesome clothing unit resources & ideas below! 

I was given this Cra-Z-Art Spinning Art machine over Christmas and thought it would be a great rainy day activity. While reading A Pocket for Corduroy I was inspired to use it along with our clothing unit! There is a part in the story where an artist draws a sketch of the spinning clothes in the dryer..voila spinner art! This Cra-Z-Art spinning machine is awesome. It comes with pre-cut papers (which we traced to make more) and three paint tubes (which we refilled with regular paint when they ran out). The machine requires 2 C cell batteries. (You could also use a salad spinner if you wanted to do this project manually.) Students LOVED choosing their own colors and watching their creation transform! We also used a popsicle stick to drag the paint through as it was spinning for a cool effect!

Here is the part about the artist sketching the clothes in the dryer!

Spinned dryer art! 

I love this mini laundry basket sorting game by Wild Olive! I haven't tried this game yet but it would make a great math center game. Add a clothespin to the game and students can be working on even more fine motor skills! The laundry baskets are actually pencil cups and I think I actually have some of those in my art cabinet!  

My students loooove bingo games! This one focuses on winter clothing vocabulary and color words! 

Directed drawing guides are fun to keep in your art or writing center! I made a set and put them on a key ring to hang for easy access. Download them here! 

Preschool Plan It has an awesome collection of FREE Preschool Clothes Theme ideas for centers & lessons!

Graphs, graphs, and more graphs!  My students enjoy interacting with graphs and especially comparing their likes & dislikes! During our clothing unit we graph types of shoes, colors of clothing, clothing sizes, etc.  Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten  did an emphasis on buttons during her Cats, Buttons, and Colors Unit.  Check out her fun button games, graph, & activities here! 

An ordinary wire shelf from the dollar store makes great fine motor practice! Adaptive Tasks blog had students use clothespins to squeeze and clip paper clothing "to dry." I have two of these racks or shelves out during our clothing unit. We use one to clip and "to dry" the clothes (made out of felt) and the other to weave. Students practice patterning (over, under, over, under) by weaving colorful ribbon scraps through the wires! 

See how my students created their own pretend center clothing store HERE! 

Yarn Block Art - See here how we created these fun prints with items we already had! 

The Preschool Experiment has some very cool laundry themed tray game ideas including an alphabet match game, sock folding tray, washcloth folding activity, clothespin number match game, and more!

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In this class the students muddied up paper pants and then used bubbles to make paper shirts"clean." This idea comes from Doodle Bugs Teaching on Preschool Wonders. 

Clothing Study (part 2)

Last week I mentioned our clothing unit study. (Read about it here!) We have started to use Creative Curriculum studies to help guide students and introduce them to new learning experiences. I like how Creative Curriculum provides many ideas for hands on activities in all learning areas! The curriculum is project based and provides excellent motivation and questioning techniques that lead students into higher thinking learning.  Through provocations, bringing in real items, questioning, and other activities, students were interested in setting up their own clothing store last week.   This activity was student led and the students themselves actually came up with the list of items needed.  I showed students a slideshow of familiar stores in our area and they were so excited to shout out the names (environmental print!!) and they also described what items came from the stores. We listed things we thought we needed for the clothing store and then watched a virtual tour/video of a real clothing store (since we cannot go on field trips) and added more to our list. I posted the list on our class Facebook page and parents were more than willing to help donate and let us borrow items for the week. It actually became a fun parent/child at home activity!   Different groups of students did different things to help set up the store. Some students folded or hung clothes, some wrote out their own price stickers (post-its!), and some created their own signs! 

Here's a photo of two of our students folding donated items and setting up shop!  THEY decided the clothes needed to be folded and I let them have at it! 

We recieved a wide variety of clothing items from party dresses and Batman shirts to furry hats and cowboy boots. 

They decided our signs needed pictures (similar to our vocab. cards). 

Neatly folded and labeled... it was all their idea!  They loved role playing in their pretend clothing store!  Here are some links below to some of the books we read to go along with this study.  I always try to have a variety of types of books with each topic we study that include: fairy tales, familiar stories, familiar characters, rhyming, math, easy retell, and informational books.

Clothing Study (part 1)

For the past two weeks students have studied the topic of "clothing" during our discovery time. We have sorted clothing by patterns, sizes, seasons, and colors! We are reading "The Three Bears" which ties in nicely with size ordering and clothing. We have felt different textures and learned how some fabrics are made. Students participated in a yarn collage project. We have been using yarn in different ways and we now have a yarn art gallery up for display in our hall and in our classroom. Students made yarn collages this week. They practiced twisting and squeezing their own glue and cutting the yarn. They chose where and how to arrange their yarn ...and were able to use recycled gas station to-go cup lids! Students also made yarn block prints by wrapping yarn around wood blocks and then stamping it with paints. We have been learning so many new words like fabric, thread, stitch, sewing, crocheting, knitting, and quilting. Students are also in the process of making a real quilt. Our pre-k assistant has brought in her sewing machine to sew together or quilting squares! We are going to talk about the different parts of the sewing machine and their functions.  We started out researching and asking questions about clothing which evolved into learning about fabric and what else fabric can be made into. The project originates from one of our school curricula called Creative Curriculum.  Today we watched children in India practice the art of weaving and students made their own paper weave art!

Documenting student learning and creative thinking!
It is not about the end result..it is about the process!

Our window gallery and Three Bears Kitchen! 

Choosing colors for yarn block art! 

Printing!

Student block prints and photo documentation in our hall gallery! 

We asked students, as they were making their art, how they were making it..
did they have a plan? ..and what happens if..?

Our paper weaving project! Patterning and positional words! 

Chang Naga kids sing a weaving song at Changdang village, Tuensang district, Nagaland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp06_BSkLIk