Tag: summer camp activities

Looking for a engaging, worthwhile activities for your summer camp? Offer Knitting or Crochet lessons. Why?

1. It teaches a craft they can practice and enjoy for the rest of their lives.
2. You’re teaching “real” life skills, not an “arts & crafts” project they’ll trash as soon as they get home.
3. Knitting and crochet help young people calm down and get away from their phones.
4. It’s perfectly acceptable for both boys and girls to knit and crochet these days.
5. Finishing a knitting or crochet project gives you a huge sense of accomplishment and self-esteem.
6. If you knit or crochet, you can make your own clothes, hats, scarves, and blankets.
7. If you use cotton, wool, alpaca, or bamboo yarns, you’re introducing a sustainability lesson, too.
8. You can engage members of your community as teachers and create bonds between generations.
9. Local crafters will likely donate much of the yarn you need (because all of us knit and crochet folks have leftover yarn and secret stashes we know we need to give away). You may even get donations of needles and hooks, too!
10. Your young people will remember “the summer I learned to knit” as one of their best memories of summer camp. 

Cindy Coe is the author of two resources to help children and youth engage with nature during summer camps. Her latest book is “The Prayer Shawl Chronicles,” a collection of interrelated short stories set in and around an Episcopal Church in Tennessee.