Introduce children to household tools at a young age. This simple activity will entertain them and encourage them to be comfortable with tools. You need an off-cut of soft wood, a handful of nails and the smallest hammer you can find. The brads in this photo are too small, even for these young fingers. I’ll have to dig out something bigger. But the hammer I found in a cheap shop for a couple of dollars is perfect.
Older kids will soon do this on their own but little ones need help holding the nail and hammering without hitting their fingers. Learning to hold a hammer low down on the handle rather than throttling the neck of it, takes time, as does getting the nail straight. Don’t we all need help with that? Once kids pick that up, smashing a nail down cleanly into a lump of pine is very satisfying. When things don’t go right, pulling the nail out with the claw at the back of the hammer is an opportunity to talk about leverage. There it is, the day’s physics lesson.
how to play with kids 