Use Your Community: Local Stores Can Teach Your Kids Practical Skills
One of my guiding philosophies, which I try to model for my children, is that we try to create for ourselves instead of buying: we make some of our clothes, we do some of our own gardening, and we often make toys and games instead of purchasing them.
To do these things, however, requires a set of practical skills that we as parents may not have learned when we, ourselves, were young. It was a painful process to teach myself how to sew on a hand-me-down sewing machine, for instance, I feel there’s a lot I don’t know about gardening even though I’ve read a LOT of books, and learning to knit from a youtube video? For me–impossible.
In previous generations I wouldn’t have had to teach myself how to cook, or make my own soap, or even breastfeed–I’d have had an entire community to teach me from childhood as part of the local culture. And that’s why, even though I try not to support most big-box stores with my money when I can instead shop at an independent store, there is one aspect of both big-box and local stores that I wholeheartedly support:
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Many specialty stores, particularly crafts or hardware stores, make an effort to teach the children within their community the practical skills they promote. Wenona has already written about the kids’ DIY workshops offered by Lowe’s and Home Depot, and I enthusiastically second her recommendations. My young daughter, working cooperatively with her dad, has hammered together, while wearing safety goggles, many a fine treasure box and birdhouse, and she’ll grow up to be a kid who knows her way around a toolchest.
Woodworking isn’t the only handy craft, however. Both of our local big-box crafts stores here offer children’s classes with very simple hand- and machine-sewing projects, as well as cooking and paper crafting.
Independent stores usually can’t afford to offer free classes even to children, but for a more complicated craft, they can afford to offer more personalized assistance, and they can help a child get involved in the community that practices her craft. Scrapbooking stores sometimes have children’s crops (A practical skill? Perhaps not, but it is fun!). Quilt stores can surprise you with the projects they guide their young students in creating. Our local yarn store, Yarns Unlimited, charges a fee for their children’s knitting classes, but once a kid has the basics, she knows that if she gets stuck she can head to our local public library, and if Miss Pat is at the desk in the children’s room, she’ll straighten her out.
It is these practical skills that can help our children create meaning in their growing lives, perhaps by giving them a lifelong and emotionally rewarding hobby, perhaps by allowing them to choose for themselves if they’d like to purchase their next sweater or knit it themselves, and perhaps, sooner than we’d think, inspire them to teach a new generation of learners whatever particular craft they love.
What kinds of practical skills do the kiddos in your hometown learn?
