Teaching Toddlers to Sew

Yesterday, Pearl asked me to teach her how to sew.  I told her I would show her after I got back from running errands.  While I was out, I considered how I might actually show my 2.5 year old how to hand sew.  To be honest, I figured she would have forgotten about the idea by the time I got home.  I'm glad I thought about it while I was out though because she was waiting for me by the door and immediately said, "Ok, you show me now?" when I arrived home.

I grabbed a piece of construction paper, a hole punch, yarn, and a plastic needle.  The idea of giving her a real needle freaked me out so I was glad I had that plastic one on hand.  We could have done it without a needle at all though and she still would have been able to grasp the basic idea.  I punched holes around the outside of the paper and explained to her the basic idea of alternating over and under through the punched holes with her needle.

I was pleasantly surprised that she understood it right away.  Once she was finished stitching, I let her color her piece of paper with markers and we put it up on the wall.  This will be a great activity for when I would like her to be quiet for a bit.  She was concentrating really hard!  Next time I will play around with punching holes into shapes so it's like a connect the dots drawing.  Maybe a heart or star to start out.  I hope this post helps you think of ideas to get your kids sewing, too!

-Kira