Through the Back Loop

Adventures in knitting, fiber arts, and family.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

100 new knitters for the 100th post

Well, maybe not 100 new knitters, but close enough! This is my 100th post, and I'm happy it's about passing knitting on to the "next generation."

Last school year, the art teacher, a fourth grade teacher, a retired teacher, and I taught a fourth grade class how to knit. After the 40 minute art class, most of the students had just gotten the hang of knitting. Their fingers were finally moving without much difficulty, but there was no time to enjoy their achievement. It was time to go.

This year, the classroom teacher planned a special event for teaching the students how to knit. Each student made their own set of needles. Here is a photo of the very masculine needles made by a couple of the boys.



We packed up the class and took them to our school district's forest, about 45 minutes away. Once we were there, the school forest teacher, who also just happened to be a knitter, started a roaring fire and we got down to business. After the class did their typical daily sharing, the retired teacher who also came for the morning gave a quick demonstration of the knit stitch. We then broke into groups of 3 or 4 students per teacher. This was my group after about 15 minutes of practice.


The girl in the grey sweater on the right is one of my students who has a hearing loss. I was happy that she wanted to be in my group and that I could spend the morning with her when I am normally teaching a different group of students.

There were several boys knitting, and they really got into it. See?


Check out the concentration. The boy in the white shirt has to have his tongue off to the side as he knits. He invented a new technique, the Michael Jordan style of knitting!

After about an hour of knitting, the students went for a walk with three of the teachers. Because of my recent asthmatic bronchitis and the fact that I don't breathe well in cold weather, I stayed behind. The retired teacher had to leave before the walk was finished so she stayed behind also and told me about our local spinning guild.

When the students came back, we ate lunch and then they had "free time" for about 45 minutes where they could either do silent reading, knit, or make smores. After smore fingers were washed, several of the boy's said, "Let's knit. That was really cool!"

What a beautiful sound!

I'll leave you with this picture of the woods. It was a cozy, special day!


1 Comments:

  • At 10:12 PM , Blogger katharine said...

    Sounds like you and the students had a great time. Great snow picture!

     

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