My children want to learn to sew. I want to teach them, but it may just kill me.
At the beginning of the year, I started adding Handiworks (Charlotte Mason’s term for skills such as woodworking, sewing, knitting, etc.) to our weekly schedule, in hopes that we’d get our work done in time to sew. They’ve been asking for days, “Please, can we do handiworks?” but by the time we’ve done schoolwork and rest time and read aloud and done our chores, I.have.nothing.left.
And then there are bits and pieces of fabric and thread and pins all over the floor. I ask them to clean it up and the children just walk around, poking their feet on pins, saying “We did clean it all up! I don’t see anything!”
I may need to come up with a space– here, near the kitchen, so I can get my dinner-prep going and still be available to them– where I can leave the sewing machine and fabric “set up.” And somehow make the clean up of said projects easier.
Any ideas?
Learning As We Go 
I haven’t taught my kids to sew. Not even buttons. Crochet is stalled on chain stitch – haven’t attempted two sticks.
So, scheduling in handiwork is good! AND your kids are asking for it too! Also good! Annie, I’m inspired to imitate you – next 1/6th – maybe.
I do actually have some suggestions, miraculously – and I know I’m entering into imaginary land having never done it, so please take it in that light!
Schedule something else during dinner prep time, something more automatic and less teacher centric.
Once you’ve found a better time for handiwork FOR YOU, because you count too,
Make a nit-pic- set up and take down chart (with pictures or photos) of what YOU mean by cleaned up. Pocket charts are prime for this, the cards can be used over and over, you can deal out the cards to each kid like a game, and then they can swap or something. I don’t know if this is Charlotte approved for habit building, but I know that my co-op ladies are faster and more cheerful when their check off list/pocket chart is clear and obvious. If NASA can have a checklist, it can’t be all bad?
Do they have a strong magnet to sweep over the area and pick up pins ‘with a gadget?’ after picking them up manually – oh, a gadget, that would be the prized card.
Are there some empty shelves/under the bed boxes/baskets where their work in progress can go? If there is a space for the in-between things to go when handiwork time is done, then cleaning it up is so much easier.
Structure doesn’t hurt creativity anymore than a trellis hurts a climbing rose.
Oo, I like that line. Do I believe it, or did it just sound good. Hmmm.
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Chris,Awesome suggestions. And a pin-picking-up gadget! Anyone know of one?I’ll send photos once I come up with a plan…Annie
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No good organizing suggestions – whenever my sewing machine is out, our dining room is a mess. But – I do have a good project. Mercy got a “Stuffed Mini Monsters” idea book for Christmas – and they prompted all kinds of fun projects. We’ve designed our own monsters – made them, stuffed them, named them, made a “movie” with them. The book was good to get the ideas rolling but now we’re good to go. Have fun sewing.
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