Real Tools and Materials

Being the daughter of two exceptionally skilled craftsmen (jewellers, to be precise) I might have also developed fantastic artistic skills but, sadly, these largely passed me by. However, I did develop a deep appreciation for the value of craftsmanship and design along with transferable attributes of creativity, perseverance and attention to detail. Now, as a mother of young child and educator I am all the more cognisant of the multiple values of handwork and exploration of diverse materials. Two skill areas I have been particularly keen to explore with my own child are sewing and woodwork, both of which he is really hooked on. Dexterity, focus, muscle strength, perseverance, problem-solving, joy... just some of the many benefits I can see have been developed in him. 

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), founder of the kindergarten movement, was an active proponent of teaching children practical skills of these kinds. In his kindergartens a central focus was on children engaging with materials in order to build their individual understanding of the world. His influence on the education of young children had a very long reach but over time elements of his  philosophy were obscured and by the late C20th the madness of health and safety had taken over, so very few preschools offered ‘risky’ engagements with real tools and materials. However, in recent years there is a resurgence in giving young children opportunities to engage with objects that might be sharp or pointed or heavy etc. Negotiating challenges and learning to pay attention to possible injury is a way of learning and, if well supervised, offers a wide breadth of creative possibility for children.

I introduced sewing to my son when he was two. He used a thick, blunt needle initially and we just focused on the up-and-down action of the needle creating stitches. His first ‘pieces’ were inclusions for a book on Space which was busy with at the time. A whole collection of constellations were created, initially with cardboard and then with various fabrics:

As such crafts require a certain amount of support in the early days, I was keen not to impose too much of my decision-making or creative designs. His pieces have always been very personally relevant to him, either as gifts for others or meeting a need or interest in his life such as the shoulder bag (again, Space-themed), the monster soft-toy or the sleeping bag for his smaller soft toys:

The same can be said of the wooden items he’s created. His ideas are always the starting point for each project and I just guide and help him out when he asks. One item he made fairly recently will stand as a reminder to me about non-interference; he had made a wooden robot and when it came to attaching the legs, I found myself giving advice regarding their placement, suggesting that the robot would look ‘better’ if it were seated. My son, however, insisted that the robot should be lying down. After failing to convince him to go along with my idea, I asked him why he wanted his robot to lie down and was floored by the response. He had this whole narrative worked out in which the robot was lying down because he was watching a bird in a tree, a friend, who was learning to fly! Well, I immediately understood that my conventional idea paled in comparison to his detailed and highly personal creation and also saw the potential to turn this into an animated story. He got the idea straight away and we set to, setting up shots and recording the voiceover. Here is the result:

Here are a couple more videos we've produced recently:

Combining low and hi tech in this way, making little movies has been something we’ve enjoyed for a long time and the woodwork has just added to the repertoire. I’m sure that as he grows up, the depth and finesse of the products will improve but the seed of creative possibility has definitely been sown. Technology is here to stay and rather than either see it replace craft or mechanics or avoid it entirely, I feel it can enhance learning and creativity and provide another dimension for expression. Many of the creations my son and I have worked on have been designed using items we’ve found or conscientiously saved for the ideal project. It has become so ingrained in us to store things up, just in case they come in handy, and a familiar refrain in our house is, ‘Ooh, we could do something with that!’. While my husband groans at the amount of junk we store, I think even he would agree that instilling the concept of re-imagining and ‘upcyling’ in the next generation is really valuable, as humankind is just beginning to grasp the scale of the damage done by the use-and-throw culture we’ve created.