Teach Your Children How To Crochet
Teaching crocheting is a valuable skill to learn, enabling them to use this skill throughout their lifetime. A child’s imagination, concentration, and patience will continue to grow when they keep working at this yarn craft. Most kids are excited about learning how to crochet but if they are not interested explain to them they can make gifts for family and friends. Most of the time they are jumping at the chance to spend time alone with you after you explain what they can make. The expression on a child’s face is unbeatable when they watch someone open up a gift they made.
Take your child with you while buying supplies. Choose the right size crochet hook, J is a good size for small hands. Colors don’t matter at this time but yarn type does. Show them the section with easy to work with yarn and let them choose the color. Starting off with angora or another fuzzy type is not advisable it’s to hard to work with. Explain to them when they get more experience they can move up to fancier yarns.
If there are other children in the house make sure they are busy or asleep so there is no distractions. Turn off the television and all the phones. You will need one-on-one time for proper instructions. Find an area that the two of you can sit together that is quiet, comfortable and brightly lit. Before you start tell them how you learned and how much you messed up so they will not feel so frustrated when they mess up. Make it fun, don’t be judgmental or give speeches.
Start by making a loop and making a chain of about six stitches. Make this very repetitive, by having them pull it out and doing it over a few times. Let them now work on double crochet by making a few chains and tearing them out and starting over like they did while single crocheting. When they feel comfortable about it move on to double crochet. Patience is the key to teaching. A slip knot can sometimes be confusing to a child and will take numerous tries to get it right. Finish by allowing the child to cut enough yarn to put through the last loop to create the knot. Keep giving them praise the whole time.
A kid gets bored easily so keep projects simple so they will have something tangible when they are done. Start on small pieces like doll blankets, potholders, or bookmarks until your child gets more consistent with the rows. Make sure they know nothing is perfect the first time and to keep practicing. After all the dolls have blankets, your child can move onto to larger but easy projects like scarves and small afghans. Once the basic techniques has been mastered they will be wanting to learn more. You will soon be moving on to teaching gauges, hook sizes, and yarn weights. Patterns are easy to come by just look online or go to your local library. Those two sources will keep the young ones busy for a long time. Keep the motivation up for them to keep learning the art of crocheting.
Marley Martinerin is a regular contributor to a number of sites and writes articles about such topics as tapestry beading, and beading instructions.
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