Description What is it about these knitted animals that captures children’s imaginations? Making Knitted Animals offers an enchanting collection of animals to knit with soft wool and natural materials—ducklings, teddy bears, lambs, piglets, a handsome rooster, and more. These twenty projects can be knitted easily using odds and ends of wool from recycled garments or left over from other knitting. Many of these projects can be completed in an hour or two. Making Knitted Animals is ideal for helping children to develop new skills and their imagination, as well as for knitters looking for fresh ways to reduce their yarn stash! Twenty endearing soft knitted animals to make, from piglets and dogs to chicks, rabbits and hedgehogs Suitable for adults and older children with basic knitting skills Illustrated with fabulous photographs throughout Hand-drawn patterns and clear step by step instructions Knit animals for presents, for nature tables and fairs A good time for children to learn to knit is around seven years of age, when their motor skills can cope with the challenge. The child learns by imitating the adult. At the school where I work, the 14- go 15-year-old pupils are invited to team up with pupils aged 7 to 8 years. The older pupils sit the younger ones on their lap and show them how to knit. In this way, younger pupils quickly learn how to knit and at the same time form a social bond with the older ones, who are flattered by the confidence the younger children show in their abilities. In learning to knit, the child also practices coordination, fine-tunes motor skills, and uses logical thinking. Modern brain researchers and neurobiologists confirm that practical abilities and cognitive skills are learned through the body: grasping things with the hands forms the basis for later grasping things with the mind, too. But quite apart from technical abilities, learning to knit also develops a child’s sense of aesthetics and beauty. — from the author’s foreword
