My Friends’ Heritage Quilt

My Friends’ Heritage Quilt lesson plan

Showcase children’s family heritages and traditions with bright colors and distinctive patterns. These individual, no-sew quilt squares tell fascinating stories.

  • 1.

    What stories does your family tell? What makes you most proud of your heritage? Traditional clothing, artwork, architecture, or perhaps the music and food? Sketch some ideas for one or more quilt squares to depict your family story with Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils.

  • 2.

    <STRONG>Prepare quilt squares</STRONG>. To make a uniform class quilt, cut fabric squares in the same size. Measure a 6 in. x 6 in. (15 cm x 15 cm) template on poster board. Cut it out with Crayola Scissors. Draw around the template and cut as many fabric squares as you need. Cut a large piece of fabric to display everyone’s fabric squares.

  • 3.

    <STRONG>. Decorate your squares.</STRONG> Create a border around each one with your favorite pattern using Crayola Markers. Choose a favorite family tradition and draw it in the center of your fabric square.

  • 4.

    <STRONG> Assemble the quilt</STRONG>. Decorate a border around the background fabric. Stick four small, hook and loop fastener tape on the back of each square and on the larger piece of fabric to attach the squares. Explain your square to all of your classmates and their families, if possible.

Benefits

  • Students gather information about their family heritages.
  • Students represent their findings in a decorated quilt square.
  • Students realize the cultural diversity their classmates by sharing their family stories with each other.

Adaptations

  • Create your own individual quilt with several squares, or ask each person in your family to contribute a square.
  • Explore geometry by making a math quilt. Younger students and those with special needs can use simple shapes and polygons. Older students can explore fractals, tiling, and tessellations. Assessment can be based on identifying shapes, patterning, and measu
  • Research the history of quilting. Discover how inventions such as the cotton gin, power loom, permanent inks, and roller printing changed quilt making.
  • Encourage families who have children with special needs to work together to design their quilts.
  • Assessment: Look for details and family pride in children’s borders, drawings, and presentations.