Ancient India Textile Project
Cotton, silk, hemp and wool
People in India were the first to grow cotton, about 2500 BC. It took
four thousand years to spread cotton growing from India to China
and Europe. But wherever people were, when they did get cotton
they really liked it.
Why is that? What are the properties of cotton, that make it different from wool, or hemp, or silk (the main fabrics people used before they had cotton)?
Why not let the children try to discover differences for themselves? You might want to have them work in pairs. Give each pair a small square of cotton, one of wool, one of silk, and one of hemp cloth. (You should be able to get parents to send in scraps of cotton, wool, and silk – make sure they are 100% cotton, not cotton polyester). You might have to get the hemp yourself, but a yard should be plenty for a whole class.
(Or, give each team only one kind of cloth to find out about, and then compare later?)
Why is that? What are the properties of cotton, that make it different from wool, or hemp, or silk (the main fabrics people used before they had cotton)?
Why not let the children try to discover differences for themselves? You might want to have them work in pairs. Give each pair a small square of cotton, one of wool, one of silk, and one of hemp cloth. (You should be able to get parents to send in scraps of cotton, wool, and silk – make sure they are 100% cotton, not cotton polyester). You might have to get the hemp yourself, but a yard should be plenty for a whole class.
(Or, give each team only one kind of cloth to find out about, and then compare later?)
Then let the children come up with ideas for what to test. What would
make one piece of clothing better than another? Is one of the pieces
more waterproof? (They could try pouring water on them and measuring
how much drips through in a certain amount of time) Is one of the pieces
thinner or thicker? Does it matter whether it is knitted or woven, or
how tightly it is woven? If they look at the cloth under a microscope,
do they notice any differences? What might those differences mean for
clothing? If they compare their own results with those of the other
people in the class, do any general conclusions result from that? Can
they graph their results? What kind of cloth would you want for hot
weather? Cold weather? Rainy weather?
Other activities:
* The Ramayana (putting on a play)
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