Again I apologise for my blogging slackness. I've been spending a heap of time at the witchlet's school helping out with her class. It's a challenging bunch of kids (ie, you want to take to most of them with a stick) and we're on our third teacher for the year. My poor witchlet gets incredibly frustrated because all she wants to do is learn, and she can't because of the disruptive elements in the class. Our new teacher actually taught my sister when she was in the third grade, and she's making great changes already. I've been in the class reading with them one on one.
I'm known as "the Knitting Lady" at school and our new teacher has asked me to teach her to knit as a method of stress relief. I mentioned that I would love to do knitting with all the kids in the class, especially the ones with behavioural issues as it would help calm them down, get some left brain right brain connections happening and help with their fine motor skills. Mrs H thinks that this is a great idea! I've ordered a heap of needles and will start with the worst kids as soon as they turn up, and gradually move the initiative on to include the rest of the class.
What I would absolutely love is for this to become a programme that schools embrace for kids with behavioural problems. Behavioural problems in this day and age seem to be a lot different than when I was at school. When I was at school, the disruptive elements were always the kids who were at the bottom of the class and not terribly smart. The really disruptive kids now are very bright and can't seem to channel their energy in appropriate ways. I foresee knitting helping them to calm down. I'll keep track of the results and see how we go. Needles crossed!
