Monday, October 17, 2011

Can't Scare Me...

I work with small children- everyday :) !!!
I do love it though. But just to prove that I am fearless - I let them hammer. Yes, you heard me correctly. With a real hammer and real nails!
Now some of you are inserting a different word for "fearless", like nuts or crazy!
We make scarecrows from scraps of wood, found items and we hammer in nails for the mouth.
 It's fun, noisy and the only time some of them get to hammer- ever!!
( Actually, several of our kiddos are quite adept. The Home Depots in our area offer some Saturday morning classes and the kids get to hammer from time to time- they love it!)
The best way to hammer with young children is to hold the nails in place with a pair of needle nose pliers and use the lightest weight hammer you can find. Sometimes you can give the nail its first tap to get it started and soft wood is a must. Don't use scraps of oak!!

 The hair is made from the filling from an old gift basket on one and raffia on the other. One hat is a small bucket, the other is a scrap of fun foam and a recycled spray paint can. The noses are orange fun foam scraps and the line work was drawn with a Sharpie. Scraps of ribbon and fabric are used for the neckties and to decorate the wire on the one that hangs. Buttons are used for eyes and the rosy cheeks are painted. I used fairly short nails with large flat heads ( easier to aim for!!) for the mouths.  These would be cute made with... you guessed it, a Dick Blick Canvas and use buttons or painted mouths instead of hammering nails!! But don't be scared to hammer with the kiddos!

** My daughter was great at hammering from an early age. My husband would give her a small hammer and some nails and let her hammer away when he was working on projects. As she got older, we hired some of her "guy" friends to work for us in the Summers and my husband could really motivate them to work hard when he told them that his daughter could out-hammer them any day!!


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