Friday, March 21, 2014
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Neighbors | Submitted.Dana Patrick's third-grade class at Austintown Intermediate School put together a quilt made up of memories from each student.
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Neighbors | Submitted.Five students who worked on making the quilt were from left (front) Avery Rosko, Kiara Reynolds; (back) Michael Palmer, Sydney Callahan and Josiah Berni.
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Neighbors | Submitted.Violetta Weidele (left) and Brock Pavelko worked on their pieces of the quilt.
By TIM CLEVELAND
Austintown Intermediate School third-grade teacher Dana Patrick came up with a project idea that will not only benefit students in her current class, but students in her future classes.
Patrick came up with the idea of her 24 students bringing in pieces of fabric representing memories of their recent pasts, which were sewn together into a quilt. Patrick thought of this project because of a reading of the story “A Patchwork Quilt,” in which a grandmother creates a quilt made with different pieces of cloth that represent different memories. Patrick said she plans on having future classes do the same project, and she will add those pieces to the ones of her current class.
“It was neat to see if they wanted to bring in pieces of memories they had,” she said. “They got to decorate the pieces how they wanted, and they put their name on each piece so they would know which one was theirs. I enjoy sewing, so after they brought the pieces in, I took them home and sewed them together.
“It started in February. We read the story and talked about it. I took it home over the weekend and sewed it together and brought it back the following Monday or Tuesday. Eventually it will be all sewed and the more years go past the bigger the quilt will be.”
Each square that the students brought in was six inches by six inches and as of now the quilt is about 35 inches tall and 20 inches wide. Some of the squares are from sports shirt or jersey, from a dance recital, or from a cheerleading shirt.
“I like to relate real life learning to their reading story,” Patrick said. “They were able to understand the memories a lot better in relation to the story.
“I’d like for the kids to be able to experience things they can’t experience at home. This is the start to what I would hope to one day be a quilt that represents all of the classes I will teach. I am hoping to continue this tradition each year and keep it in my classroom for when students come back to visit! While making the quilt, the class talked about the memories we made this year and how they will always be apart of us, just like the story.”