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cotton bolls

Cotton bolls hanging from the plants

People in India were the first to grow cotton, about 2500 BC. It took four thousand years to spread cotton growing from India to China and Europe. But wherever people were, when they did get cotton they really liked it.

Why is that? What is it about cotton that makes it different from wool, or hemp, or silk (the main fabrics people used before they had cotton)?

Brown hemp button-down shirt

Himalaya Hemp Button Shirt

Then let the children come up with ideas for what to test. What would make one piece of clothing better than another? Is one of the pieces more waterproof? (They could try pouring water on them and measuring how much drips through in a certain amount of time) Is one of the pieces thinner or thicker? Does it matter whether it is knitted or woven, or how tightly it is woven? If they look at the cloth under a microscope, do they notice any differences? What might those differences mean for clothing? If they compare their own results with those of the other people in the class, do any general conclusions result from that? Can they graph their results? What kind of cloth would you want for hot weather? Cold weather? Rainy weather?

More about the history of cotton

Other activities:

* The Ramayana (putting on a play)

Bibliography and further reading about cotton:

Cotton and Silk, by Jacqueline Dineen (1988). Easy reading.

Cotton, by Guinevere Healy-Johnson and Nancy Shaw (1999). Also for kids.

Cotton Now & Then, by Karen B. Willing (1996).

A day in ancient India
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