5 Big Lessons Kids Learn from Making Things by Hand

Have you ever had this experience – you have a project to do around the house and you’re wondering how in the world you are going to get your kids to help you with it without threats or bribes?
Mark Frauenfelder, founder of the most popular blog in the world, boingboing.net and editor in chief of Make magazine, has some ideas that work. Not only that, they will actually teach your kids a few things while they help you. What a great combo – life lessons and free labor!

Here’s how he did it by making the decision to live a DIY life – that’s Do It Yourself. His sixth book, entitled Made by Hand – Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World (ISBN 978-1-59184-332-0 copyright 2010 by Portfolio by the Penguin Group) was released recently and tells of his adventures in the world of No Trips to Home Depot (well, maybe fewer trips to Home Depot and more trips to your judiciously-maintained junk pile) and what he learned along the way.
1. Learning without Knowing It
Mark tells Family First when he has a project to work on, he simply pulls out the tools he needs and gets ready to work. Curiosity usually gets the better of his young daughters Sarina and Jane. “What are you doing?” and “Can I help?” soon follows. Mark sends them off to grab other tools.
He said they are especially inquisitive when he gets a new tool of some sort. They want to touch it, try it out. He says as long as it’s not a dangerous power tool, he will usually let them have a try. Now his daughters know the difference between a flat-head and Phillips-head screwdriver. They now know what each side of the hammer head does.
Their attention span is much shorter and their skill level much less adept, but now he’s training his future labor force in a way that allows them to learn on their own terms, at their own pace and with no nagging from Dad. Brilliant!
It takes patience on the part of a parent. They are going to split that piece of wood. They are going to get more paint on themselves and the ground than on that fence. But he likens it to the story in Tom Sawyer about Tom recruiting the kids to help him white-wash the fence. Tom made it seem so fun and such a privilege, the kids were fighting with each other to have a go. Wouldn’t that be nice to have such an eager group of helpers?
2. Get Creative
During the design and construction of their treehouse, Mark had the girls helping him. He says they gave their opinions on the design but as the project progressed, they peeled off and did their own thing. That was ok with Mark because this “parallel play,” as he calls, was still time together and time where they were learning.
He said one of his daughters was practicing screwing a screw in to scrap wood. She made a pretend iPod out of wood and some doll furniture. This is not your normal “art” class. She designed that on her own – out of nothing. Not only was she thinking creatively, but now she has new toys she created. It’s a little bit like Christmas morning when the kids play with the box instead of the expensive item it used to house. As long as they’re having fun, they’ve got a new toy too!
3. Managing Expectations
One thing Mark pointed out about doing things yourself is that your level of expectation does change for whatever you are working on. You are not going to have the same results that you would if you bought a similar item at a store. That doesn’t make it bad; it just makes it different. And it makes it yours because you created it. This is a great lesson for kids too – not everything has to be shiny and new and perfect if it works, if it reused items that used to be “junk,” and if it gives you the pride of knowing you made it yourself.
4. Empowerment
Mark says their garden is especially interesting to one of his daughters. She helped plant the seeds and watches the plants grow. She wants to check every day to see the progress. Because she was in on the entire process, she had an investment in the success of the garden. She sees the whole cycle, from seed to full-grown vegetable. They’ve even saved seeds and planted them the next year to make the circle complete. What a great lesson – seeing the literal “fruits” of her labor.
The same goes for raising chickens. From the tiny chicks that arrive in a box to full-grown hens laying eggs every day, Mark’s kids see the life cycle in motion and understand how raising chickens and keeping a garden feeds their family. What an empowering concept for a kid, instead of just buying food off the shelf, not knowing where it came from.
Mark wrote in the book about how his children’s friends had no idea that eggs came from chickens. When they were given eggs to take home for their families, they decorated the eggs, made clothes for them and fashioned little homes for them.
Now some of their friends are starting to keep chickens and a garden and make their own yogurt, kombucha, and sauerkraut. They see that making their own food helps sustain their family. They now understand more about the power you can have when you do things yourself.
5. Take Risks- Make Mistakes
He mentions the example of his daughter helping paint their chicken coop. Half of the paint ended up on the coop and half on her. When kids “help” it usually doubles the time it takes but there are so many things they are learning in the process – how to do it themselves, they have the power to change their environment, it’s ok to mess up – it’s not the end of the world.
He said each time you try something on your own, you learn from your mistakes. You may learn how NOT to do something. You also learn how to raise the bar for next time. Isn’t that so much of what kids are learning about in life – how to mess up and what you learn from that?
These kinds of lessons are hard to teach without practical life experience. Having your kids help with projects can really bring home a lot of life’s lessons. When parents are patient, not yelling about the mess, including their kids on the project at a level appropriate for their age, it’s not only great bonding time, it’s a great teaching time too.
Go for it, Mark says. You’ll be glad you did.
If you would like to read more about Mark’s adventures raising chickens, keeping a garden, carving wooden spoons, designing the best cigar-box guitar and much more, check out his book at boingboing.net

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