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Skinning Stuffed Animals -- It's Educational!Posted Friday, October 28, 2011, at 3:16 PM
My kids are part of a co-op group that meets every Thursday for classes. The parents are the teachers, and we all sign up to teach classes that are in our area of expertise each semester. This year the board voted to plan the classes around a "Way Out West" theme. This made it a little tricky for me, since I was planning on teaching ballet. Cowboys in tutus just didn't seem like a good idea. So I decided to teach a class called "Working With Leather." I'm not a leather expert, by any means, but I do have some limited experience. My dad is a book binder by trade, and I did skin a rabbit for the 4-H Tanning project years ago. So I did some research and prepared enough lessons for a six-week class covering the uses of leather, how leather is made, leather crafts, and leather care. I didn't think the 7- and 8-year-olds in my class would want to actually skin live animals, so I cooked up the brilliant idea of using stuffed animals. We tied yarn around the legs of their teddy bears, stuffed dogs, and even a frog, hung them upside-down from a coat peg, and then used scissors to slaughter them. We cut the heads off first, so the "blood" could drain out, and then slit them down the belly and up the legs, cutting out the feet. We scraped the skins with butter knives and then soaked them in buckets of water, salt, and alum. We stirred the skins with wooden spoons while I explained the process of tanning to the children. Then we tacked up the hides on pieces of cardboard and Styrofoam for display. The funny thing was that we had a photographer visit our co-op to take school pictures earlier in the day. She had her equipment set up in my classroom, and was just packing it up when we started whacking off the teddy bears' heads. I think she was just a little bit disturbed at first. She said, "This is a very interesting class. What are you teaching the children?" I explained to her what we were doing, and she just laughed, saying that she had always thought homeschooled children were nice! I guess we are nice, but Teddy had better look out! Comments Showing comments in chronological order [Show most recent comments first] |
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What a horrible waste of perfectly decent toys! Based on the picture, there's eight plushies that could've been put to good use for little kids who need something huggable during the nighttime.
Maybe it's the decapitated Snuggle doll that disturbs me the most, but I must admit a certain amount of worry that at least one (and that's one too many) of this group might go on to slaughter and cut up real animals later in life.
And when I say animals, I put people in there, too.
What lessons are really being taught here?
I know that my kids have always had more stuffed animals than we ever knew what to do with, and so did I when I was growing up. We've always had to go through them at least once a year and throw out all of the extras. There are always plenty of stuffed animals to be found at Goodwill and at yard sales in the "free box" or for a quarter. Since we have so many kids, people tend to give us all of their leftovers, too. Maybe you can understand that from my perspective, stuffed animals are hardly a scarce commodity.
I encouraged the kids in my class to pick up an old animal from a yard sale and not to choose one that was special to them. All of the parents and children have been aware since they signed up for the class back in July what we were planning on doing.
I feel this was a much better way to teach the process of leather making than to use real animals, although if one of the children does become inspired and grows up to become a leather tanner by trade, I have no problems with that. I love my leather couch and the leather seats in my van and all the other good things we have thanks to leather.
You say from "[your] perspective, stuffed animals are hardly a scarce commodity." Is that true for others? No. Since homeschool teachers have a fondness for field trips, might I recommend a trip to Northwest Indiana, i.e. Gary? It need not be that far. Westside Indianapolis? Have those kids got a surplus of toys to throw out?
It might've been a better lesson to show these kids what actually goes on in slaughtering and skinning animals. Perhaps they might not have enjoyed it so much.
And while you're praising the wonders of leather, remember this: The Nazis and Ed Gein also made all sorts of wonderful products out of leather.
Again, what lesson is being learned here. Good day to you, madam.
I grew up in a poor family, so I'm actually quite familiar with poverty. I'm also quite familiar with people who felt sorry for us giving us their old stuffed animals. It was always a little awkward, feeling like just because we were poor, we should be grateful for everybody else's trash. But that's probably a subject for another day!
I think using the stuffed animals instead of real animals is a very good idea, we also always have too many stuffed animals and they can only be handed down so many times before they just need to be thrown away, this was a great educational way to put those to use instead of just sending them to the dump. Great idea and wonderful learning experience!
Great idea. We too, have an abundance of stuffed animals. For YrYngrSibling, you must not be hitting the same garage sales as I do. People give away their stuffed animals! It's called recycling.