Monday, January 21, 2008

To Knit or Not To Knit

There was a small rebellion in my Sunday School class yesterday. One child refused to come into class because she said that she hated knitting and didn't want to go. I talked with her mother afterwards; she said that her daughter had been wanting to learn to knit for years, was very excited about it, and was dismayed to find that she didn't pick it up right away (this girl is usually very quick to catch on to new material) and was humiliated and wanted to give up immediately. So mom calmed her down a bit, I lent her A First Book of Knitting for Children so she could practice at home, and it looks like it will all work out. We took a class vote and it was divided 50/50 between people who wanted to knit and those who didn't so now knitting during the storytelling is optional. We did the very exciting story yesterday of the fall of Jerusalem to the invading Babylonians and how Jeremiah saved the Ark of the Covenant. I have found that the children don't have the vocabulary to understand the stories as they are written so I have to really put them in my own words and enthusiastically get them involved in the action. After all, these are amazing adventures and they're real! We found it hilarious that the king himself was the one who commanded a hole to be torn in one of the defending walls (of course, it didn't work out for him very well, he snuck out but was later captured and killed) and then, lo and behold, the enemy was able to use that very opening to get in and take over the city. Duh. :-)

Anyone have children refuse to knit? What do you do if you only have one child, it is part of your homeschool curriculum, and you absolutely are facing a blank wall of refusal. Do you give up? Do you postpone and then come back to it? Do you resolutely carry on and fight about it daily? Just curious...

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