Monster Finger Puppet (and knitting maths) for kids

Thanks to everyone who left a comment on the last post, or emailed about their experiences of teaching kids to knit. I've had a few people ask for the stitch counts etc to make the little Monster I showed you so the details are below in case you'd like to use this with your own children.

Notes: Adults will be casting on for the brand new knitters and when they are ready, we will show them how to bind off. The children are aged 7 to 11 and as part of our school's strategy of demonstrating that maths underpins everything, we will be asking them to work things out and get a better understanding of what they are doing and how it all relates. We use maths language they are already familiar with (estimating, rectangles, increasing and decreasing, measuring, tally, half, etc).

Skills required for this project: ability to make a knit stitch.
You will also learn: how to bind off and how to sew up your project.

You will need: 

• Small amounts of Double Knitting (DK) yarn, in a few colours for the monster and its hair. 
• 4mm knitting needles 
• Needle to sew the monster together
• Buttons or other embellishment for the face
• Measuring tape 
• Your finger measurement

Instructions: 

1. Start with 12 stitches - after each row, check that you still have 12 stitches
2. Knit all stitches on each row until the work is 5mm - 10mm shorter than your finger 
3. Bind off all stitches, leaving a long tail for sewing  - you have a rectangle! 
4. Fold your rectangle in half (from side to side), and then sew the top and sides together
5. Add a face and hair with buttons and yarn, or anything else you like! 

For discussion:

- The best way to learn is by spotting mistakes and then fixing them, let's see how many mistakes are made today, and use a tally to work out which are the most common. 

- After five rows, how tall is your knitting? 

- How many rows do you think you'll need until it's big enough? 

- What are the measurements of your finished rectangle? 

- How many rows did you knit to make it that size? 

- If you wanted to have a monster which was 10cms tall, how many rows do you estimate you'd need?

- What do you think you'd need to do to knit a square?

Last year, most children only took a few sessions before they were knitting independently and chatting away as they did so. It was so lovely to see! Of course I can't post photos of the children, but I'll see if anyone wants to have their finished monster photographed instead.