My favorite thing about having my kids at home with me is the opportunity to teach them valuable lessons from everyday life. I feel it is so important for them to understand the process of hard work…learning that an egg just doesn’t come from the grocery store…or that a sweater isn’t just as easy as grabbing from Walmart. No, I believe in teaching them the process behind things so that they can fully appreciate what they have.
Lesson from the Land: From Sheep to Sweater – grab your kids and do this with them!
Today’s random lesson came when I saw this picture of a Valais Blacknose Sheep from Switzerland. I called my daughter over to come look at how adorable they are.
This started the conversation of their wool and how we use their wool to make many, many kinds of clothes. I grabbed my son’s wool sweater and put my new wool socks on and proceeded to tell them the process from sheep to sweater.
Thank God for You Tube! First we talked about sheep and the many uses for them. They have delicious milk, they provide meat, but most of all, people have been using their fur for many, many years. I told them how the farmer let’s their wool grow all year long, but when winter is over, in the spring, he SHEARS them.
“Does it hurt?” asked my daughter.
“Not at all! The farmer has special scissors or clippers that make the job easy. ” Then we watched this video of a farmer shearing his sheep.
They watched it intently for the whole 8 minutes. We watched how carefully he held the sheep and how good the sheep was.
Then we talked about what happens after the sheep is sheared. All the wool is now spun into yarn. Today, it’s easier to do this cause man has machines. But, back in the day, it was a careful process that was all done by hand.
We watched this video of a lady spinning wool into yarn by hand.
We finished off our lesson reading a beautiful book called, “A New Coat for Anna.” I was happy to have this book in our collection and we all snuggled together and read the story. It is about a little girl who needs a new coat. Her mother sets out to find a good farmer with sheep and purchases the wool. She then takes the wool to a lady to spin. Then she takes it to a lady to weave it. And finally she takes the cloth to a tailor to make a special red coat for Anna. The whole process takes a little under a year! It made me realize how much we have forgotten about this whole process of waiting for things to come into season.
If you don’t have the book, you can CLICK HERE to watch a book reading on You Tube.
It was a wonderful lesson that just randomly happened when we saw a cute little sheep! These opportunities are always available to us…we just need to have a watchful eye for when they pop up!
