Weaving the sides of a basket is fun, easy, and beautiful, but let me tell you, the bottom is extremely frustrating. It’s a lot of work and comes out looking terrible, but at least it’s hidden by the beautiful sides. In this article I will explain our experience with basket weaving.
I bought the basket-making kit at a Boy Scout store. (You can see the package in my YouTube video Ancient Egypt Unit Study. And if you look closely, you will see it in my Ancient Greece Unit Study, at the front middle of the floor. I was going to make it a standing joke to have the unmade basket during each time period, but I decided to just do it after all.) The kit gives you tiny directions that look so difficult that it took me three years to even decide to try. I was not looking forward to it.
First you had to soak all the reeds in water to soften them up so that they wouldn’t be brittle. Then you have some reeds crossing each other like an X on the bottom. I weighed down the sides of the X with heavy books to keep them from moving. The thinner reeds get woven through in a spiral. I finally figured out that I needed to have my kid’s foot on top of the reeds that kept popping up on one side, and it went a lot better when we made the second basket.
You have to keep the unused reeds in a wet towel to keep them from drying out. After finishing the bottom of the basket, you soak the reeds, bend them upwards, and tie them with a twist tie. You keep weaving the sides of the basket higher and higher, choosing different colors of reeds as you go. When you come to the top, you loop the big reeds over in a loop.
Well, for the first basket, we forgot to soak the top reeds, so they broke. It was so frustrating. I finally grabbed a large pair of scissors and clipped off all the reeds that were sticking up. In other words, the basket can easily unravel now, so don’t do this.
The other basket tapered inwards because we forgot to take the twist tie off earlier. Oh, well. At least the sides are looped and won’t come apart.
In summary, after initial frustration with the bottom of the baskets, we had a lot of fun weaving the sides of the baskets, so I would give the entire experience a thumbs up.
Tags: Ancient Greece, art, crafts, Homeschooling, unit study
I haven’t tried this. It looks like your kiddos had fun. How “lucky” they are!
The kids had lots of fun, but I myself didn’t have fun doing the bottom of the first basket with my oldest son. The weaving was so loose, and I couldn’t tighten it because the reeds were stiff. Maybe re-soaking it in water would have worked. “Underwater Basket Weaving” might actually be a real class, now that I understand a bit of basket making. LOL!
Very, very cool!
I love baskets, too. I love the idea of having the kids make them. It sounds like your family likes crafts as much as ours does. It seems our kids learn more when they are doing things like this than when we are doing “school” things. Thanks for visiting my blog.
I love making baskets I used to teach classes years ago. I am sending you a blog award:) Check out my site to see it
Hi. Can you tell me approximately how long you believe it would take a scout to put together one basket? I’m thinking of volunteering to help a group of about 6 boys make 3 baskets or their badge but wonder how long that would take. Could you put together one basket in 2 or 3 hours? Thank you.
It depends on how big the basket is and how fast they are weaving. I’m not actually sure how long it would take, but if some of the boys don’t finish, you could have them finish it at home.