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Making our own natural dyes

The children at BestStart Montessori Taradale have recently enjoyed working through a project which has come about organically through the donation of some raw wool by one of our families.

Having discussed where the wool had come from and showing the children how the wool gets shorn from the sheep, we were puzzling about what we could use it for...Then two of our tamariki showed us that their Mummy had dyed their teddies pink! Some of the older children thought we could dye our wool pink too...we then discussed how we could make some dye using things we find at Montessori such as different types of foods.

The children joined me in researching what was involved in using natural sources of dye in the form of foods and what we would need to do to turn our food into dye. The children were then hands on in cutting up the various different fruits and vegetables we decided upon being spinach, blueberries, beetroot, saffron, turmeric and avacados. The process of making the dyes was very experimental, and at every step of the way, the children tried to guess what the outcome would be...sometimes we got the colour we expected but sometimes we did not!

The process of dyeing our wool was equally exciting, and again the children had the opportunity to be a hands on part of each step. Our natural dyes did not always produce the result we were expecting but this was an important part of the scientific learning for the children as well...making hypotheses and guessing what would be our outcome. In some cases, we decided as a group that using food colouring might be our best solution! At the end of an exciting week of dyeing, we had a basket of colourful wool to use...At this point, the children were shown how to make a peg doll and given some materials to enable them to design their own. Each child was able to choose paper, ribbons and wool, and given some assistance with the hot glue gun to produce their desired peg doll.

Interwoven with the scientific learning involved with the dyeing process, the children have been enjoying the Te Ao Maori creation story "In the Beginning", which has fostered understandings about our connection to Papatuanuku Mother Earth and how she provides the tools we have used in our learning. The Montessori philosophy sits hand in hand with the Te Ao Maori view of our tamariki being guardians (kaitiaki) of the earth and that our job as teachers is to provide them with the knowledge and tools to support their work in caring for our natural world.