Hammering is not an easy skill to learn, but a fabulous activity for eye-hand coordination when the children are able to manage it.

If they haven’t tried it before, it is a good idea to start them off hammering into something soft like a bar of soap or some polystyrene.

This gives them the chance to hone the skills of holding the nail upright to start it off and hammer the nail in straight from the top.

The children were able to move onto hammering into a log, which again wasn’t too hard. It is always best to use a soft wood such as pine.

It is tricky getting the concept across to them of letting the hammer do the work – hold it by the handle, use your wrist and allow the lever to do its darndest.

They ended up doing a great job and we didn’t even have any hit fingers (this time!).

We have just one geo board at kinder which we made about three years ago … sad, we know!

The children of 2010 have used this board …

a lot more than the children in the past so we decided it was time to make some more.

Only this time we wanted the children to make them … not us!

We picked up some lengths of pine timber from Reverse Art Truck over the week-end and brought in the hand saw so the children could cut the timber up.

We don’t have a vice unfortunately but these large clamps worked beautifully.

Once we helped the children to get started they were off and very determined to complete the job themselves.

We find our children just LOVE doing “real work”.

Once the timber was cut up it was time to sand off the splinters.

Instead of just banging nails in anywhere we asked the children to mark out a plan on the wood as to where they wanted their nails to go …

and see if they could hammer their nails in place!

They did an amazing job.

These children continue to blow us away every single day!

Some children chose to paint their geo boards …

while others were just too keen to get down to the business of playing with them.

Throughout this project lots of play based learning took place  …

with new language like ‘geometric’, maths concepts, physical activity, hand eye co-ordination, patience, turn taking and sharing of equipment.

As we’ve mentioned before Reverse Art in Ringwood  is a wonderful recycling depot you can visit and pick up the most incredibly useful stuff.

Small off cuts of dressed pine is always something we seek out …

… as the children love to use the big hammers and nails.

Some of the children have very specific ideas about the things they want to make but mostly it’s just about the nails, the wood and the banging!

It’s great for the children’s hand eye co-ordination and although occasionally they do miss the nail and bang their fingers … it’s important for them to learn limitations. They very quickly learn how hard to hit the nails for them to penetrate the timber and to watch what they are doing at all times or … ooooouch!

The children like to jazz up their creations with different bits and pieces they collect from the invention table.

A group of children asked if they could hammer things onto a small log they found in the garden. They often go back to the log and add more decorations to it. We love to see the children working co-operatively together on projects.