Hammer and Nails

I get A LOT of inspiration for play with my kids from a preschool teacher named Teacher Tom.  He is a Seattle, WA cooperative preschool teacher at Woodland Park Cooperative PreSchool.  You can find his blog here.  Most, if not all, of the learning (thinking) which takes place at Woodland Park is playbased learning.  Woodland Park's philosophy is children learn through play and real life experiences.  I try to incorporate as much of that philosophy along with many of his ideas with my own children.

Teacher Tom has a woodworking center with real tools at the school for children as young as two.  I thought we would start with the basic hammer and nails and we began hammering. 

We talked about safety (especially since I forgot safety glasses) and just as Teacher Tom recognized, children are especially cautious when you allow them to have real tools.

Kate said she wanted to build a lemonade stand when she got bigger and Drew said he was going to help.  They did very well and even though they missed and hit fingers they continued pounding and learning how to use their first real tool.

Two days in and both are still very interested in going hammering.  Who knows what these two will build one day.  As Teacher Tom says, "As humans we have being alone, we have talking face-to-face; for everything else we use tools. The more tools we know how to use, the more experience we have using them, the more the world opens up to us. It's really that simple."