Learning handcrafts plays an important role in the development of fine motor skills, development of the will, and creating intellectual capacity. Handwork offers many opportunities for practicing math skills and reinforcing tracking important in learning to read. Author and Waldorf teacher Eugene Schwartz points out an even more valuable result:

“We cannot underestimate the self-esteem and joy that arises in the child as the result of having made something practical and beautiful – something which has arisen as the result of a skill that has been learned. In an age when children are often passive consumers, who as Oscar Wilde once said ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing,’ learning to knit can be a powerful way of bringing meaning into a child’s life.”

All students at Sebastopol Independent Charter learn to knit, crochet, hand sew, machine sew, embroider, as well as a variety of other such skills.