If you are wondering how you can stimulate your child’s creativity why not try to do a woodworking project with your kids. Children love to play with tools and create stuff, but many parents don’t have much confidence in their child being able to work with tools responsibly.
The biggest inhibition is that many are down right scared that accidents might occur.
This is a shame, because it’s really not hard to teach your kids responsibility towards safety in woodworking and materials maintenance.
The only thing that’s really important is that the parent should always be present and attending the project. So never leave a young child alone at the workbench, even if he or she promises not to touch anything while you’re away for a minute.
Be patient. If your kid doesn’t strike the nail properly the first time, don’t take the work away from them. Practice and stimulate.
To make sure your child stays focused and stays clear of danger you have to pick a woodworking project that the child understands. It has to be simple, clearly laid out and executable in one day, preferably within hours..
The latter is very important as children have a different feeling of time than adults. If a project takes too long, the child will lose interest. You must always remember that children want to play.
A good practice before starting any wood project, is to teach your child how to hold a hammer and nail, or how to use a saw properly. Let them play around with small pieces of wood. Tell them to make a sword for instance, or a simple airplane. Both are cross-shaped, and with some children’s fantasy they will turn out to be really cool.
As soon as they understand wood and the basic tools you can try to move up to the next level.
You can introduce them to new tools, shapes and plans. But keep it simple. Don’t show them the power tools just because they can hold a hand saw.
Another question is at what age your children can start woodworking. A safe age is at seven years old, but there’s plenty of kids that start earlier than that. Basically, if your kid shows genuine interest you can start by giving them a small hammer and a nail. If they really like it, you might consider building or buying them a small children’s workbench.