Crochet Therapy

Before CHOP, we had donated handmade items to hospitals, and taught crochet to elementary schools. However, we had never thought to actually bring crochet to the hospitals to teach, as art therapy. (We've developed our own term- crochet therapy!) As nice as it is to receive handmade items, it's a lot nicer to be able to create your own beautiful pieces of art. On April 30th, we decided to try it out and see how it would work out, as a trial run. We decided that we would do two projects: 1) Paper flowers- Easy, tissue paper flowers- there is no wrong way to make them, each of them are unique and beautiful. We thought that it was the perfect time to make them, as it was a very spring-oriented craft, and the kids there all loved it and made flowers for mother's day. Even the boys, who were a little uneasy about being "girly" and doing a craft with us, participated! (once we told them how much their mothers would love their flowers, of course!) 2) Chain stitch crochet bracelets- Super, super easy, these bracelets are just the basic crochet chain stitch. Can be done by hook, or by hand! This was a particularly good thing for art therapy with the kids, as it was not at all difficult, and the kids were able to use their hands and pull the strings. Many of the kids had autism, and seizures, and didn't have much interest or patience to do the flowers (the flowers took a little more time and patience), but they responded VERY well to the crochet by hand especially. In fact, we were only supposed to go for an hour or two but we wound up staying over three hours! At the end of our visit, CHOP invited us back again, for when we return to school in the fall. We are planning on doing a regular crochet-therapy program there, especially with the crochet because that worked out so successfully.