Making Monsters at School

For some crazy reason, obviously something to do with my massive hero complex, I offered to help with ‘University Day’ at school.

Ed's first sewing project

As parents, we were invited to come in & share with the kids our expertise, talents and proffessions.

What a great opportunity to teach kids how to sew I thought to myself...only when I started getting the project together did I realise the reality of teaching 5 year olds to hand stitch...gaaaa.

I even did a small experiment with my 5 year old, I helped him appliqué a little circle onto a square. It went ok, but Ed being Ed, he soon wondered off.

 

So after much mooching through Pinterest looking for inspiration, a few sketches, I then made a few practise monsters. Got a bit carried away. Never mind

Eventually I came up with a simple design.

I raided my felt box for scraps, cut out monster shapes, gathered together some buttons, thread & stuffing. Armed with these I went to school today.

my basket of goodies

I was terrified but actually it went very well. I knew it would be a big ask, but never one to underestimate a child, I jumped in with both feet. If my kids have taught me one thing, it’s to never presume they can’t do something, because they’ll usually have a go and they’ve often been observing far longer than I think they have, and therefore understand far more than I think they do.

So I had three groups of kids aged between 5 & 8. An hour per group. Just an hour to sew on button eyes, growly teeth, stitch up the sides, stuff & close up. 

They chose their felt bodies, button eyes & teeth. They chose whereabouts they went on the body.

And yes, there was a lot of waiting around for the poor things. With only one of me & needles that constantly left their threads behind, cotton that got knotted & troublesome buttons, I had to do a fair amount, but the work they did do was fabulous & it was a pleasure to see the different ways they approached solving their problems. When we ran out of time, I had to finish some over break time & at the end of the day as they were going into their end of day assembly, I stayed behind to frantically finish off a few.

Despite how difficult some of them found it, it was awesome to see how passionate they were, & how keen they all were to take them home;

“Can we take these home?” yes.

“Can we take them home today?” yes.

“Really?” yup.

I hope they loved it, even if it was a bit dull at times as some of them had to wait a few minutes for me to re-thread needle after needle, sew a few buttons & snip a few threads.

These are a few of the monstery delights they made today.

Arrggh! Monsters!

Happily, I have ticked ‘run a makery class’ off my bucket list. I think this totally counts.