Miss Lee's Genius Hour

This week I am continuing with crocheting my blanket. I find crocheting very relaxing as I can work on my blanket while I watch a TV show or listen to music. It is great to relieve stress from school work! Last week I reflected on my commitment do make a blanket and stated that I know I will not be able to complete it. I currently have 6 rows completed. Each row takes over 1 hour to complete. (Lee, 2017) I continued to reflect and I were to implement Genius Hour into my classroom, I will know that some students will require a lot of time to complete the projects they want. However this will help students learn time management skills and adjust their schedule/project accordingly. This week, I sent my sister a picture of my blanket so far. She stated that she really liked the color I chose. The yarn I used was given to me by my grandmother. She knows that I enjoy knitting and has given me lots of yarn...

For Week 4 of Genius Hour, I continued working on the blanket. I felt that I did not need to do any more research for now. I re-watched the video of the blanket tutorial and pattern several times when I got confused. The great thing about crocheting is that it is okay to make mistakes. It is easy to undo the yarn if I catch the mistakes right away! I think I was able to quickly learn how to crochet because I know how to knit. Crocheting and knitting requires the ability to know where the stiches go, if it looks right, and see if a mistake was made. I crocheted for the hour straight and it did not look like a lot had been accomplished. (Lee, 2017) This made me begin to reflect on my choice of Genius Hour project. I have known (from previous research and knitting) that crocheting projects typically do not take as long as knitting does. I thought back to the blankets that I have knitted, which have taken me several years. I should have chosen a ...

For Week 3 of Genius Hour, I planned to continue practicing stitches and practice making the blanket using the pattern . I practiced the stitches and was so excited to start the blanket! I applied the "chain stitch" that I learned previously to begin the blanket! I found it challenging because I had to make a chain of 161 stitches. I lost count and had to redo it several times. Then I found that it was easier to count out loud to keep track. By watching the video , I learned that a "double crochet cluster" is a group of 3 "double crochet" stitches in one stitch. By the end of the hour, I completed 2 rows of the blanket! (Lee, 2017) I am proud of myself because although it was challenging right in the very beginning due to my mistakes, I persevered! For the next Genius Hour, I will continue the making the blanket!

This week for Genius Hour, I planned to find a pattern to make a blanket along with continuing researching and practicing different stitches needed to make the blanket. Although I found several patterns that I really liked and saved them on my Pinterest board, last week, I found that I learned better from watching YouTube videos. Therefore, I found a tutorial on YouTube that included a pattern . knitpicks. (2016, Jan 21). Beginner crochet blanket, full class [video]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9xW-qwyEU I really like this video because it guided me along step-by-step and I could also follow along with the written pattern. This pattern required the stitches 'sc' (single crochet) and 'dc' (double crochet). I did not know how to do a double crochet, so I researched it! I found out that this stitch is 2 times longer than a signle crochet stitch! This is the video I used to help me learn: Crochet Guru. (2012, Oct 23). How to doubl...