Fifth Grade Wabi Sabi Felted Pouches

In this lesson, we explored the idea that people see the world in different ways and find different things beautiful, interesting, or mysterious. We learned about the Japanese tradition of Wabi Sabi – finding beauty in things that are imperfect, simple, comfortable, and ordinary.  We read the book Wabi Sabi written by Mark Reibstein and illustrated by Ed Young.  We thought about wabi sabi qualities as we designed and felted our pouches.

Felting is a way of compressing and matting wool fibers so that they turn into cloth.  We felted our designs by taking barbed needles and arranging wool roving on top of the felt cloth.  When we poked the needles through, the roving was pushed through the felt and was caught on the other side.  After doing this dozens of times, the roving became matted to the felt. 

We learned about contemporary nomadic peoples in Mongolia and Central Asia who felt clothing, tents and yurts today.  Students enjoyed watching a brief video of the traditional process done by modern-day Mongolian people.