See?  Smiling.  They’re having fun.

People will sometimes come into The Yarn Spot or A Tangled Skein, or when people find out I’m a nanny and a craft instructor, and they will ask me a common question: “How young can you teach children to knit?”  This will be closely followed by, “How do you teach children to knit?”  This series of posts will address some of those questions.  (This also happens with crochet, but I say knit because people assume very often, even when I’m crocheting that it’s knitting.  Depending on my mood and their level of interest, I’ll sometimes correct them.)

Sweetness has been knitting since a few months after I met her, so around 3 1/2.  Light is 2 1/2, and is already showing interest.  She has her own needles, and will ape what Sweetness and I are doing, but she doesn’t quite have the attention span.

As follows, a sweet list of 7 tips for teaching very young children:

Make sure they’re interested.  If you are teaching them to knit at a young age, the desire has to come from them.  At three or four, they only way they will be interested in learning is if THEY are the ones who came up with the idea.  Don’t try to force learning on them.

Keep it Short.  Lessons should only go for at most 10 minutes.  Keep it short.  Stop while they still want more.  The longer you go at it, the more likely they’ll get frustrated and loose interest.  I know it’s tempting to keep going when it’s going well, but you want to end each lesson with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, not frustration.

Have them sit on your lap and hold the sticks with you.  Sweetness was (and still is, but it’s a close thing) small enough to fit on my lap when we started.  I would hold the needles with her and do the stitches.  Later, she took over the right hand, and then the left hand.  I still would do the wrapping of the yarn, while she figured out what was going on with the sticks.

Show them several times, then have them “teach” you.  This does two things.  One, you can listen and hear how they are thinking about the stitches and the movements they are doing, and then use the language they are using.  If they think of it more like a wrap instead of a yarn over, call it what they call it.  The proper language can come later.

Take turns.  Have them do a row, then you do a row.  This does two things.  First, you can correct any mistakes they made on the last row, like wrapping the yarn the wrong way and creating twisted stitches, picking up dropped stitches, or evening out their tension.  Second, their square grows faster this way.  Don’t be afraid to do a few rows after they’re done, to keep it growing.

Give them short needles.  Long straights, or even circulars, can be hard for small kids to manage.  I normally use a pair of double pointed needles, 8″ long, and put rubber bands at the end.  This way, if we loose one, I got 3 to replace it (packs of DPNs normally come in 5) and the shorter needle is easier to manage.

Focus on the skill, not on the result.  At 3-6 years old, children are still developing fine motor skills.  They’re first knitting may not even be usable.  Don’t focus on making anything in particular other than a square.  Just focus on getting the skill down.

Please, don’t set their sights on a scarf.  So many people come into the store with kids, saying that they want to knit a scarf and it’s their first project.  I always try to steer them to some different options – some of which I’ve listed HERE.  After the first 6-10″ a garter stitch scarf gets really boring.  Children are young.  The amount of time it takes for an adult, never-mind a child, to knit a scarf is LONG.  Give them a more attainable short term goal.

What type of advice would you give someone who was teaching a young child to knit?