Industrial Revolution: Cotton Enrichment Activities

A friend of mine reported that after just a day of school at home, his wife was searching for history resources for the Industrial Revolution. Preferably a documentary so his wife could get some work done from home. 

I found plenty of good documentaries and compiled a lot of them into a YouTube playlist. Take your pick from any of them. If you have a younger child then this video is designed for a younger audience. 

Cotton, thread, and fabric production helped to kick-start the industrial revolution, so here are a couple of enrichment activities to help kids understand why mechanization was important to society...

Removing Seeds from Cotton
If you can find a cotton boll (sometimes you can find them in the dried flower section of craft stores), you can let kids try to get the seeds out. Until the cotton gin, this had to be done by hand. 

Thread From Cotton Balls 
Get a cotton ball. Pinch a small part and pull/twist to create a thread. Explain that this is how they made thread for cloth from cotton/wool/silk back in the day. Once we figured out how to mechanize the process with wind/water wheels, it started the industrial revolution.

Dye Cotton with Plants
Make tea (black or herbal, chamomile is a traditional dye plant, btw. So is turmeric. And blueberries, try the zinger teas for red/purple). Soak cotton (ball, string, fabric, q-tip) for several hours. Let dry. Discuss how all our clothes become colorful due to dyes. Historically, most were made from plants (purple was made from snails, red is often still made from beetles, mushrooms were also used at times). Now many dyes are made synthetically.