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Students Knit to Calm Their Emotions and Exercise Their Brains!
Kenowa Hills Public Schools, MI, has integrated both knitting and yoga into the school days of Central fifth-graders. Knitting produces both academic and emotional benefits as it helps to reduce anxiety, improve focus and develop self-esteem among the students.
These three boys are sitting in the school hallway and focus on the task in hand: knitting.
“Once you get it down, you can focus on it,” said Owen Taylor, a fifth-grader at Central Elementary School. “It just kind of calms you down, if you’ve been doing a bunch of reading.”
“Ever since we’ve started knitting, I got a higher score on my math test,” volunteered Evan Breuker, noting he scored 100 the day before.
The idea for the knitting and yoga sessions emerged from concerns teachers had about their students’ well-being.
“Last year, we started seeing kids coming to school who were very anxious, very angry,” VanDam said. “We wanted to give them tools to handle their frustrations, and to be able to move forward.”
Once each marking period, a yoga instructor would come in order to help students with breathing and stretching exercises. On Wednesdays, it was the turn of grandmothers, neighbors and other volunteers to help the fifth-graders knit.
Source and images: Schoolnewsnetwork.org.
