new to the forum- children orientated woodwork.

[Andy_T]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the forum, in fact I'm new to any forum! I found you because my son is about to go to middle school and during the visit we looked around the woodwork room. It was fitted out with a few machine tools (scroll saw and sander). My son along with his younger brother and sister spent almost the whole visit there cutting wood with hand tools and hammering nails in. This sent me right back to my childhood for my farther was joiner and I spent all my teen age years in his shed using his tool doing things that would terrify me today. A thirteen year old with a radial arm saw, bandsaw and lathe! Well I survived but my bench woodwork ended when I left school(discovered girls) and I have gone on to become and engineer. It is now my intention to set up a workshop in the garage that is safe! and will allow to kids to build things they want. What we build will not be your traditional things but already we have build wooden guns for the dressing up box, catapults after a day with English heritage, Red arrows after the southend air show and space ships for lego starwars figures to fly. As you can see not you normal projects. I try to keep things simple and fast to keep their imagination going. I will get my first few post out of the way and then I'll get some photos posted as I need some advice to complete these projects (don't worry the kids are playing with the toys without them being quite finished). So to finish this post hello again and if anyone has advice about children oriented woodwork please let me know what you have tried.

cheers Andy

 

[PowerTool]

Hello,and welcome to the forum
You need to have made at least three posts to be able to post pictures,but after that point - no pictures,it didn't happen :wink:

Your ideas sound very good so far - going for something relatively quick,and also topical.

Andrew

 

[oddsocks]

thinking back to my childhood, I often took a piece of wood and planed/filed it into the shape of a boat hull - don't ask me why as i was not sea orientated!

Another idea would be a go-kart - that's good for getting the ideas around braking, safe steering stops etc..

 

[joiner_sim]

Hey welcome to the forum! The design and build possibilities are endless! Your imagination is the limit!

However, I don't know how old your kids are, but they might like to have a go at something I have used before. I'm not saying go out and buy it, but maybe make something like it. I'm on about the product here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colorific-11639-Wood-Worx-Aeroplane/dp/B0009GV5PE I have used the product for ease and it was great, but you could easily make something like this at home from scratch. I posted this into a topic a while a ago here, https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29480&highlight=kids

Hope that helps you.
Simon.

 

[oddsocks]

seeing the plane mention in simons link, you could try something like this (or simplify it as needed)

cars not included - that pic was from my son's bedroom 10 years ago!