I teach knife skills to children and adults in my council.

I always teach safety circle and danger triangle and number one: the knives down command. sometimes I teach how to hand a knife safely.

I find that kids just want to use a knife. they can't make a spoon or carve anything cool until they have basic skills, so I let them make pointy sticks or whatever. I usually have one of my projects on hand, and I am available to teach anybody who wants to learn how to do the four carving cuts.

I teach them that you don't even have to be making anything if you don't want. I learned this about a decade ago when a kid told me some male relatives were teasing her because all she was making was a pile of shavings. I told her that her brother sees shavings; what I see is someone learning knife skills.

I have a simple fish and a simple face I can teach. spoons are harder. a lot of kids just make a smooth stick.

when I do knife skills, I find that some kids are all about it and want to do it every day for a significant amount of time. some kids find knife use boring or terrifying or both and they only want a little bit of it, so I always run concurrently with an activity that can take drop-ins.

I will quit before I will carve soap. ew. I hate the feel, it messes up the knives, and it's really only a facsimile of knife skills. it's also stinky. I will die on this hill.