Crochet and Educating My children! Week 2

Welcome to week 2 of the crochet education blog series.  This week we are featuring a Sewrella pattern but before we go into that let me know down below how you are coping.  We are about to start week 3 of sheltering in place.  This will be the first full week that the five of us are home together. I will have to spend the entire five days not only educating my children but making sure they use their indoor voices so my husband can get work done.  They did okay last Thursday and Friday knowing that he could not be disturbed during his “office hours.”  I’m crossing my fingers that will continue.

In terms of getting school work done, it’s been like pulling teeth.  My kids love school and learning and pick up new skills fairly quickly. However, they love routine. In fact, they are absolutely obsessed with routine.  That being said, I can’t do things exactly as their teacher did and am having trouble getting them to understand that their schedules just can’t be the same. There is also a smaller student to teacher ratio so a lot of the work they complete in school is to occupy them while the other students are finishing.

After two weeks of this, I have reevaluated my schedule.  I am still following the routine showed last time but we are incorporating more playtime after each subject. When I started homeschooling, I didn’t account for extra time added to school for lunch, recess, special, and other filler time. So I have decided to alternate between playing what ever interests them and convincing them to play something educationally stimulating. When we are not working on education or letting them play what they would like, we play with a marble race steam game, a robot that walks up the fridge they made from a kit, or they read a book that interests them.

Now lets get to this weeks feature pattern.  This week we are featuring one of Sewrella’s patterns from her Books & Blankets series.  This pattern is great because you could make the blanket and curl up under it to read a book, or it can be used for a variety of sorting activities.  You can have your children take the items you are sorting and place them on different color sections of the blanket. For an added bonus, check out her website for a fantastic book suggestion.

Learning to sort items and thoughts is a very important academic activity for all ages.  This blanket is perfect for exactly that.  This blanket will be extremely useful the entire time they are out of school.  The best part about this is that you can teach them the concept, then provide them with an activity to sort objects with the blanket, and then crochet while they complete the task.  If you like these posts and would like to continue to learn how to use crochet projects to teach your children then sign up for my email list. Now let’s get to some fantastic activities below.

Academic Activities

• Provide children with a pile of items and have them place them on different sections of the blanket to sort the different color items
• Provide them with upper case and lower case letters and have them sort them
• Sort letters so the letters in the name is on one side and letters not in their name are on another side
• Sort words of items that are living and not living
• Choose a category and have your children sort items (ex. Animals, numbers, food, etc.)
• Print pictures of healthy foods and unhealthy foods and have them sort them
• Sort pictures with a certain number of items on each one. (ex. Place pictures with 3 items on it in one section.  Place pictures with 4 items on it in another section.)
• Print or provide them with items and have them place the ones with a specific beginning sound in one section and other ones with a different beginning sound in a different section.  This can also be done with ending sounds as well.
• Sort odd and even numbers.
• Sort words according to spelling patterns.  There are lots of worksheets that you can print and have your children cut out blocks.  Instead of having them glue them on the sheet or before they glue, have them sort them on the blanket.
• Grab a pile of books and have them sort between fiction and nonfiction books

If you have ideas for other activities that can be sorted with this blanket, either email me or comment down below so I can add it to this list and share it with everyone.

When you are done, feel free to share your finished work on Instagram using #llamaunraveled. You are welcome to sell completed projects, but please link back to my site. Please do not copy my pattern, do not redistribute my pattern, do not claim it as your own, and do not publish it anywhere.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

llamaunraveled@gmail.com