Learning a Bit More About The History of Beading!-Learning Project #3

After last weeks struggle bus with beading, I decided that this week, I needed to just spend the majority of my time doing some research and figuring things out before I just jumped in again because I felt very overwhelmed. Now one thing you need to know about me, is that I have been cursed with the “if I am not perfect at it immediately, I will never do it again” gene. So part of me really wanted to give up after last week. I can preach growth mindset and how practice helps build confidence and skills to my students until I am blue in the face. But for some reason, in my mind, that doesn’t apply to me. So because I wasn’t immediately amazing at this, I really truly wanted to quit. So I guess that is one benefit of this project because I can’t just give up because I need to do this for class- Thanks Katia! 

So back to the internet sources I go to gain some more confidence by learning. Research and watch videos on things is literally my favourite, so theres a plus at least. 

I started by doing what everyone does when they need to know something- Google. (Honestly what would I do without Google- iykyk) I came across this blog by Melissa called “Check It Out” and I figured that since it is a blog that it was very fitting to check it out (see what I did there) and see if this could help me. Now this site didn’t give me too much to go off of, but what it did give me, was a bunch of links that she has used to help with beading. This was great because at least I know someone else has used the links so they are vetted a bit. 

The first link was to an article called “A Thread Between Generations: Indigenous Beadwork From Then to Now” and it is a history of beadwork. I thought that this was such a great place to learn a bit more about the history of the beading.- I saw Morgan did this for week one in her blog and I took a page out of her book to go back and learn some of the history so shoutout Morgan! 

The article was so interesting and shared some artist spotlights at the end and they had some of the most gorgeous beadwork that I have ever seen! I spend a solid amount of time just looking at the beadwork from these artists! 

I went back to the next link from Check it Out which was a CBC Kids article called “Do You Know What Beading Is” which is a kid friendly article explaining what beading is and the history of beading in an easy to understand language. This was super helpful to me and I found it really interesting and helped me gain further knowledge about the topic which was great. 

I then went back to Melissa’s article and unfortunately, the third link was dead, but the final link went to a site called Cedar Lilie that had spotlights on some of the artists works, but then also is a shop for buying different beading supplies. This was great to look at because I learned about some of the different beading supplies that they had outside of what was in my little kit. I think that I might look into ordering from them later if I needed. 

Although this week I didn’t end up doing the practice and learning of skills that I thought that I would, I think that learning some of the background information about the history and the materials involved was almost just as helpful as it would have been if I practiced because of the knowledge that I gained so I am glad that I took this time to research!