Make Knitting Needles First

Yes, I've been teaching kids to knit for years now... and this last evening I had a major breakthrough. Make the knitting needles FIRST! Before you start laughing, let me explain. We always go through the story of wool -- where it comes from, how it is processed, what it looks like in all the different stages -- and try spinning it some to make our own yarn. Then we do finger knitting with one finger and finger knitting with the whole hand (four fingers) and then we make our needles and then I teach them how to knit with needles. But when you have kids finger knitting like crazy, all the pencils in the classroom mysteriously disappear as children will use them to hold their loop in place when they set the finger knitting down. By making the needles first, they can use their needles to hold the finger knitting loops instead of all the classroom pencils!

TA DA!

Amazing. It's amazing to think about all the things I will have learned about teaching when I've been doing this for twenty years.