4o ESO Textile Toys

In the Winter Term students of 4o ESO Tecnologia studied Textiles Technology.
Their design brief was to design and make a Fabric Toy for a child of 4/5 years old that would be in some way educational.  After extensive research into existing products, fabric types and their properties, components (e.g. Build-a-sound recording devices), construction techniques and sewing machine function, some excellent ideas grew!


After a month of hard work, cutting patterns, selecting fabrics, printing, painting and sewing, a broad array of products were finally complete!  'Hospital bed' by Nadir Robles, with which children can discover the location of various body organs and 'Rag doll' by Selma Azzubair which has detachable labels for body parts in both Spanish and English and 'Card creature' with a pocket for learning flashcards by Natalia Porras, all encourage bilingual word recognition.  
Other students focussed their attentions on emotive response and memory - 'scary doll' by Marcos Alexander, 'red teddy bear' by Marcos Paez and 'brush your teeth pillow' by David Paez.  Many of the ideas were inspired by movement - Andres Cespedes' aeroplane and play balls produced by David Romero and Micahel Hindle.  Patricia Mbula chose literacy as a point of interest with an applique alphabet pillow.  


On Tues 18th and Fri 21st of Jan the students finally put their toys to the test by presenting their work to Primaria students of the 'Osos' and 'Leones'.  With the assistance of teachers Mercedes and Dori, we all had a lot of fun playing with the toys!  Primaria children questioned the ESO toy makers about the materials they used and how they sewed them together (David Romero, Michael Hindle, Anna Martinez and Nuria Cuesta gave excellent accounts).
The primaria toy testers are currently producing drawings and ideas for improving the toys.  Particular favourites were 'The market', a very detailed playmat made by Carla Ramirez that helps with numeracy, animal and food recognition, an expertly stitched 'purse doll' by Guillermo Satue and an innovative soft ipod by Alex Garcia, complete with picture of Johnny Depp and the 'Pirates of Caribbean' theme tune!


CONGRATULATIONS to all 4o ESO students involved in this project - your hard work and dedication really paid off!  
THANK YOU Osos and Leones for enjoying the toys with us and giving us all excellent feedback!

Photos by Patricia Mbula and Alex Garcia:

by Menna Buss