Free Home School Math Lesson Plan: Crochet in the Classroom

Teaching your child how to crochet can incorporate many other subjects in a home school lesson plan. This first in a series of home school lesson plans using crochet will focus on basic math skills. Instead of counting pennies or marbles, your child will count stitches and rows.

Materials Needed for Your Crochet Lesson Plan

To teach your homeschooler arithmetic using crochet, you will need the following items:

Yarn
Crochet hook
Scrap paper and pencil
Measuring tape
Calculator (optional)

Teach Basic Crochet Stitches

The first step in bringing crochet into the home school classroom would be to teach the basic crochet stitches. If you don't already know how to do a chain stitch, single and double crochet stitch, you can find many helpful video and text tutorials online, or ask a friend to show you.

Using a Ripple Crochet Pattern for Your Math Lesson

A pattern that is simple yet would allow for math lessons of varying difficulties would be a basic ripple. More photos of a finished ripple afghan with a link to the free pattern may be found here.

This home school math lesson involves counting stitches, counting rows, and using multiplication, division and addition to figure pattern repeats.

The pattern calls for a multiple of 16 stitches plus 2 for the pattern repeat. That means that you multiply 16 by the number of ridges you want in your piece, then add two stitches to that number for your foundation chain row. A full sized afghan may be too large for a home school project, so you may want to make a ripple baby blanket instead. If using worsted weight yarn, one pattern repeat is approximately 5 inches wide. Your child will need to use addition, multiplication and division to determine how many chain stitches are needed in the foundation row to make a baby blanket that is 30" wide.

Have the student work up 2-3 rows of the pattern stitch and check their gauge by using a measuring tape.

Decide if you want to crochet the piece in one color or use two or more colors for a striped ripple pattern. If using more than one color, decide how many rows of each color you want and your child should make a tic mark on a piece of scrap paper after completing each row. Basic math skills are used by the student to count the rows and keep track of the tics to know when to change to another color of yarn.

If your child is too young or doesn't have the dexterity to learn how to crochet, you can still use the above lessons in math on any crochet pattern that you may be working on.

Source:
Personal experience