Hello!
It’s me, Deanna, the teacher with 20+ years experience who, like you, is practicing social distancing at home with my child. I have decided to use my training and experience to develop a daily list of activities for you to do at home with your kids.
The good news is, at least in my jurisdiction, school boards are beginning to put together learning plans to deal with what is looking to be a prolonged shutdown. And teachers are beginning to reach out to check up on their students. (We really do care for the kids in our classes.) This will take some time though, so in the meantime, I am going to keep making lists.
Today is the birthday of both Bob Mackie and Tommy Hillfinger, two icons of American fashion design, so in honour of that today’s list will focus on fashion, fabric and yarn
Teach Yourself the Fabric Arts
The maker movement has been a huge part of the last few years and as part of it there are plenty of videos on the Internet to show you how to do a variety of fiber arts. Most of us have a sewing kit lying around or those crochet hooks Aunt Marge gave us one Christmas, so why not dig them out and see if your kids can pick up a new hobby. The key here is to watch the videos and then try it yourself.
Sewing – everyone, and I mean everyone, should know some basic hand sewing tips and tricks. My son is learning how to sew by working on his Scouts campfire blanket. There are days it is painful, but this is a life skill.
- Hand Sewing Basics – A video to teach you how to hand sew.
- Learn How to Sew by Hand: Six Basic Hand Stitches
- Paper piecing made simple | Quilting Tutorial with Angela Walters
- How to Sew a Patch on a Uniform
- Hand sewing 2 Sewing on a button – everyone should be able to sew a button.
Knitting & Crochet
- How to Knit: Easy for Beginners
- Finger Knitting with Children – requires only yarn
- Erin’s Crafts for Kids: An Introduction to Crochet with a Simple Bracelet Project
If these prove to be too easy, there are literally 1000s of tutorials and pages on the web with projects.
History of Fashion
Children may enjoy looking at the way in which fashion has changed over the years.
DK History of Fashion – A nice interactive site that looks at women’s fashion throughout the 20th century.
This site is a timeline of fashion history with articles and information that span from ancient times to modern. Would be great for older kids to get lost in for an afternoon.
Glamour has produced a series of videos entitled Evolution that look at a variety of fashion trends over 100, including boys’ and girls’ fashion ones. Watch them with your kids and discuss how fashion has changed over the years. Have your kids make predictions as to where fashion may go in the next few decades. Even better, have them draw those predictions and share them with a family or friend via video conferencing
If you need a podcast on this, I would like to recommend Dressed: The History of Fashion. Each episode looks at famous designers, the evolution of a particular piece of clothing and the hosts, April and Cassidy are fashion historians, so they know their stuff.
Fashion’s Impact on the Environment
One of the issues that has come to the forefront is modern fashion’s contribution to climate change.
For older children – have them research this topic and present a listicle on how to address the problem.
For all of your kids – look at the trend of upcycling. A couple of the projects they can do themselves include
Fashion Show
You can certainly take a break from everything and take in the fashion shows from Paris and New York fashion week. Then challenge your kids to make their own fashion show. They can use anything they have in the house. Maybe their stuffies will strut their stuff in the height of social distancing fashion. Maybe it will be their Lego minifigs. Be sure to get a front row seat and don’t forget to wear your shades.
Deanna Toxopeus is a teacher with 20+ years of experience teaching students from Grade 1 to Grade 8. She is currently an Itinerant Teacher of Assistive with the OCDSB. The opinions she expresses in this blog are wholly her own.