Loom Bands Craze

Unless you don't speak or look at your children, you will know about Loom Bands. The latest craze involves children creating different types of fashion items out of small coloured rubber bands. Even suit jackets have been put together using them!

My step son has been designing some of his own, self taught through watching youtube instructional videos.

It was discussing them with him that I realised the potential of using this craze as a focus in the classroom.

I asked them to explain what they were? How to make one? The enthusiasm he responded with got me thinking about how I could harness that in class.

I am sure many schools may have banned these accessories and can understand why, however for this to work you may need to arrange a day or afternoon where you allow children to create and make some fashion accessories. You can pick up a set of the bands from Amazon for £2. Using loom bands could be a great DT lesson, either making bracelets or other objects -








To give children time to make something like this, will have them hooked and is an another example of the Camouflage Learning approach.

And it is the way you can then use this enthusiasm in different curriculum areas to get some great work from the children. For example:

Numeracy - 

Work out how many bands are used to create a ring. Then work out how many would be needed to make rings for one hand, two hands, two children, ten children or even a whole class.

Work out how many bands are used to make a bracelet. Work out how many would be needed for 5 bracelets, 10, 20 100 etc.

Link colours to ratio and proportion - if a bracelet was made from 40 blue and 30 green bands, how many bracelets can be made from 120 green bands? How many blue bands would then be needed?

Look at percentages - if I use 50 bands and 20 of them are blue what % are blue?

You could also look at cost per band. If you can buy 2000 for £2 you can work out how much 10 bands would cost and apply this cost to price up bracelets. Children could then look at profit gain if you were to sell the bracelets.

This could potentially become an enterprise project. Children could choose a charity and set themselves a £100 target for fundraising through making and selling loom band creations.

Literacy - 

 With children being the experts on loom bands, the teacher can really focus on embedding text features when asking children to write about them. You could for example write:

  • A set of instructions for how to create a bracelet using Loom Bands.
  • An explanation text all about Loom Bands.
  • A letter to the Headteacher why they shouldn't be banned.
  • A persuasive advert why people should buy their designs.
  • Discussion text - Are loom bands good for children? Should loom bands be allowed in school?
With children who are obsessed and interested in a topic, they will be more inclined to write about it with passion.

Give it a go and please share any examples of work you produce with your children!

UPDATE Here are some examples of different classes using Loom Bands as a stimulus -

Farsley Fairfield 

More from Farsley Fairfield

AccessArt Competition

The Numeracy Shed







Comments

  1. Aashumi 29 June 2014 at 23:44

    wow it was about time someone would put these bands to educational use, I have promised my new class loom band lessons and you have made life easy for me thank you

    ReplyDelete

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