Untangled: PA sponsors free knitting club for students
There's been a recent explosion of the popularity of knitting, with children and adolescents taking up the craft alongside college students knitting as part of their service learning programs. It's not difficult to see why knitting (and crocheting) have enjoyed a resurgence of interest and activity. Here are a few major benefits of knitting for children:
- Knitting has been shown to develop their fine motor skills, particularly bilateral integration (coordinating the left & right sides of your body), core stability, and hand dominance.
- In a culture immersed in technology- and screen-mediated everything, it seems, the quiet, tactile nature of knitting offers the benefits of developing children's focus as well as patience and perseverance.
- Children who knit enjoy the meditative, solitary qualities of the activity but at the same time enjoy that knitting is a social activity as well (knitting circles, knitting clubs).
- The creativity expressed through knitting ranges from determining project types, sizes and shapes to selecting color and patterns to learning different techniques.
Waldorf Schools have integrated knitting and other handwork into their curricula for 90 years for precisely these reasons, as noted in this Waldorf Research Institute "Handwork" publication (e.g., see page 17 for benefits of knitting). The health benefits of knitting were reviewed in the January 25, 2016, New York Times Well section too.
Various studies have documented how learning to knit benefits students in their academic studies as well. The March 2013 issue of American Scientist discusses, for example, how knitting can be used to render complex 3D mathematical surfaces and objects, such as a Klein bottle and a torus, to improve student comprehension. As shown in the image above, there are obvious mathematical shapes to the knitting patterns themselves as well.
The after school knitting club will be held on Thursdays from 3 to 4 pm and will run from Thursday, January 12, to Thursday, February 16. UPDATE > KNITTING CLUB HAS BEEN SWITCHED TO WEDNESDAYS!
A sign up will begin for a knitting club taught by PCS parent Holly Maran, mother of Winter Maran (MP), for lower, middle and upper primary students. All students must be able to sit and concentrate on what Holly is teaching.
Interested parents can sign up in Maggie's office or by emailing Gretchen.