Teaching Toddlers To Sew...a series of mishaps, one mouse, and a cat.

[sharktopus]

Firstly, please excuse the quality of these photos. I took them with my tablet and it was horribly awkward (the camera is on the front, and it's just...very awkward).

Anyway,  recently my daughter has taken a serious liking to all things crafty. She's three, and fairly dexterous, so I set her up with some felt cut outs and an needle (that I dulled a bit for safety purposes) and let her be.

Keeping the shapes simple, I marked around the edges with dots, and did about three stitches myself to get her started. After that, she was off.  I had to keep the thread fairly short because her arms are short, and it just resulted in a tangle.

We made a mickey, and a hello kitty (her favorite), along with a dog, a shark, and another cat, but she gave those to her cousins for Christmas. 



It keeps her occupied for a good hour when I need it, and has helped her in leaps and bounds when it's come to patience. Which is serious business when you're three! Anyway, I am super proud of her, and kind of just wanted to brag.

Maybe eventually (when I have a proper camera) I'll post my own crafts!

[Mrs Shak]

Wow! She did a fantastic job. I never thought about applique with my kids, I did the shoe string sewing into holes thing. (You know what I'm talking about?) I'm going to have to have my kids do this, the 5 and 7 year olds anyway, my 10 year old won't do it. She's a baker not a crafter. lol

[Momof2!]

That is a great idea! My 4 year old has been wanting to sew something so bad. She got one of those little plastic sewing machine toys for Christmas, but it's a piece of poop. We cant' get it to do hardly anything and we both get frustrated. I never thought of hand sewing. I will definitely be stealing your idea Your daughter did a great job and I bet she was very excited to be able to give away gifts that she made herself.

[sharktopus]

Wow! She did a fantastic job. I never thought about applique with my kids, I did the shoe string sewing into holes thing. (You know what I'm talking about?) I'm going to have to have my kids do this, the 5 and 7 year olds anyway, my 10 year old won't do it. She's a baker not a crafter. lol

We did the shoe thing too.  And for a while, my daughter really got into beading (she's never put anything in her mouth, so no worries there), so I'd would take shoe-strings and tie a knot in one end, and let her bead it up.  It helped with her colors quite a bit. I'd give her a bit of paper with a big red square, a green square, and a blue square, and have her make a 'pattern' with the beads on the string (red, green, blue, red, green, blue).  Certainly kept her busy!

[Mrs Shak]

We've done a lot of the bead stringing also. I love doing hand and footprint things. My favorite is to turn a footprint into a unicorn or horse.