For this week’s braiding practice I wanted to start somewhere that would me work on the basic parts of braiding at a slow pace. I ended up choosing two Youtube videos to help me start off my journey. One was called, “BEGINNERS START HERE! How To Braid Hair For Complete Beginners” and the other, “4 basic braids for beginners, How to Braid Hair, Easy hairstyle.” Now the second video is one I think I will be referring back to towards the end of this assignment. This is because I hope that if I get proficient enough at a “standard” braid then I will try to learn 1 or 2 different styles of braids.
(My videos from this week)
From where I left off at my last attempt to learn braiding, I picked up with a “three-strand braid” which will be the one style I will work on to really grasp and get good at. I never even knew it had a specific name always assuming that it was just a generic braid so learned something new already! Now where I really find I have to work on is keeping the hair strands separate as they go in between each other. As I attempted to do it the first few times using my hair mannequin, it mostly ended up in a fuzzy mess the first few attempts.
I tried to reflect on what I really hope to get from taking up this new skill and I think a few things come to my head. First, braiding hair is something I have almost no experience or familiarity with so I enjoy it gets me out of comfort zones. Second, as someone who hopes to be a dad one day to a little girl, I want to be able to do these things with them. Lastly, I feel that learning a new skill and documenting the process along the way is a valuable way to show people that we are all good learners, but maybe you or your classmate do better learning a different way. Let people see these processes so that it becomes more and more normal to accept different learning styles in the classrooms. This year I am actually doing a similar assignment in two other classes where we are choosing something to do over the semester and documenting the process.
I am not totally sure how much time I am going to need to dedicate to this weekly to get as good as I WANT to be. However, I am fairly confident by December I will be much better than today. But then I also tell myself that the biggest thing is not to stress about mastering braiding but to improve little by little, to see what works and what does not and to connect my learning experiences to the kind of teacher I want to be in the future.
As I keep going with the braiding week by week, I think I am going to have to get spray bottle with water to mist the hair as I practice more and more. Hopefully this helps me figure out how to stop the fuzzy messy braids from appearing!
Hi Carlos! I really appreciate you mentioning that you know that you will get better eventually even if it does not always feel like that in the moment. I am doing crocheting for my learning project, so I need to keep that sentiment close to heart when I get frustrated.
I also struggled with keeping the hair strands apart when I first learned how to do a basic braid (still do sometimes). If I remember correctly, I think I put hair ties close to the bottom of each of the three strands to keep them apart from each other. Doing this can kind of mess up the placement of some hairs, but it helped me until I could keep track of everything on my own.
Hello Carlos!
I enjoyed this week’s learning project post about Tree Straid Braids! Remarkably, the determination and reflection you are doing for your future daughter. You are going to be a super teacher and dad! I can’t wait to see your progress next week!