In the century before last, children saw with their own eyes how bread is made from wheat, from linen - clothes, from wood - toys. And how much effort goes into it. A modern child gets everything ready-made, just go to the store and pay the money. Human labor is no longer valued. Ushinsky’s story “How a shirt grew in a field” shows how hard material wealth is given to people.
about the author
K.D.Ushinsky is one of the founders of Russian pedagogy. He was convinced that study should be fun, and created wonderful textbooks for elementary school: “Mother Word” and “Children's World”. For these books in pre-revolutionary Russia studied entire generations. The textbooks helped the children learn the world, made them think, draw conclusions, taught kindness and mutual assistance.
Konstantin Dmitrievich proved himself as a wonderful children's writer. He talks about the world around him in an accessible and interesting way, and teaches important moral lessons with simple examples. The teacher tried not only to give the student encyclopedic knowledge, but also to connect them with ordinary life, to teach to distinguish good from bad. We find all this in Ushinsky’s work “How a shirt grew in a field”.
Content
The narration is conducted on behalf of the girl Tanya, with whom the little reader associates herself. The story "How a shirt grew in a field" is compositionally divided into three parts. In the first of these, the father sows flax seeds, promising his daughter to grow a shirt. Such a promise is surprising. Tanya watches with interest how flax grows and how it is harvested.
In the second part, the collected plants are treated (threshing heads, drowned in a river, dried, crumpled with a pulp, beaten with a bobbin, scratched with a comb to softness). Children see all the processes through the eyes of a peer, worrying with them for a drowned shirt and wondering how it would turn out from a tow that resembles children's hair?
The last part is devoted to spinning threads and creating a web. A modern child will probably be surprised by the fact that our ancestors needed about two years to make a shirt. Be sure to focus on this.
Using the story in class
Ushinsky's work will be interesting to children 5-10 years old. It is actively used in classes in kindergarten, in school lessons. Reading the story “How a shirt grew in a field”, children become interested in folk crafts and traditions. Often this becomes the starting point for research projects. In rural areas, enthusiasts, along with students, are trying to reproduce the flax cultivation cycle.
Museum workers love the work. Combining reading a book with a demonstration of old crumbs, ruffles, spindles, looms is a great idea. If you are introducing your child’s story, find the images you need online. You can see the process of processing flax with your own eyes using the video posted on YouTube.
What does the story teach?
Ushinsky not only describes the process of growing and processing flax. The end-to-end thought of the text “How a shirt grew in a field” is respect for hard peasant labor. From May to September, people worked in the fields and gardens, growing plants, fighting weeds, harvesting and processing the crop. At the same time, it was still necessary to take care of domestic animals, to harvest hay for the winter.
With the onset of autumn in the evenings, women diligently spun double threads of linen and wool. Then they could not be bought in stores. Three shirts took 11,200 meters of thread. But you also needed other clothes, bedding, towels. It took a lot of time. Weaving machines in Russia were assembled in March. Only two months were with the peasants to weave the canvas. Linen fabric was then bleached for a long time.
Sowing work began in May. In summer there was no time for sewing. Cutting clothes began only the next year, in the winter. Ushinsky shows the little reader how much human energy it takes to create one shirt. The end of the story is solemn: by Christmas, Tanya and her brother Vasya receive new clothes, "white as snow." The story feels a reverent, respectful attitude to clothes that have been acquired by such labor.
Where do modern shirts come from?
Turning to the past, we recall the present. The story “How a shirt grew in a field” is a great occasion to talk about creating modern clothes. As before, flax is grown in the fields. However, technology actively helps people: seeders, flax shredders, balers, flax grinders, flaxing machines.
After processing, the resulting raw materials are sent to a spinning mill, where the machines twist the threads. At the weaving factory they make linen, at the sewing - they cut and sew clothes. The finished shirt goes to the store. Find on the Internet pictures depicting modern equipment, technology. Please note that machine tools and machines are controlled by workers.
If in Ushinsky’s story, the shirt was made by members of one family, now many people of different professions are working on it. Therefore, clothing is created much faster and grabs it throughout the city. But behind every thing there are people who have worked for us.
The story "How a shirt grew in a field" teaches us to see behind ordinary objects a person who made efforts to create them. This idea is important to convey to children. Without this, it is impossible to instill in them a careful attitude to things.