5 Tips for Teaching Kids How to Use Real Tools

We have made an effort in our fam­ily to teach our chil­dren at a young age how to use real tools. I wrote about the recent at-home work­shop my Hubby did with the kids, after get­ting wood kits from Home Depot one Sat­ur­day.  A few peo­ple com­mented & asked me ques­tions by email about how we worked on doing this as a fam­ily.  Because they were inter­ested in explor­ing more “real” items with their kids but weren’t sure how to start.  Given panic can eas­ily set in watch­ing young chil­dren work with any tools.  As par­ents we are hop­ing that over time they will learn how impor­tant these tools are & how to use them safely.   There is noth­ing like the joy as a par­ent of hear­ing a child exclaim “I did it!” while work­ing on a project along side Mom or Dad it made my heart sing to see the kids all work­ing together & Hubby proudly help­ing each of them.  How­ever, in teach­ing them about tool usage we have set some ground rules.

1.  An adult must always be in charge.

In our house this is usu­ally Dad.  He has more patience than I do for tools , I tend to worry too much about what “might” hap­pen, while he enjoys the moment while keep­ing safety front & cen­ter.  He also enjoys work­ing with the chil­dren teach­ing them how to build or fix things.  I’m there to act as a sup­port in all areas of teach­ing with these projects, but this tends to be an area that he excels in patience & doesn’t want to chew his arm off in fear of some­one get­ting injured.  Not that I want to, except that I might want to.

2.  Dan­ger­ous tools are off limits.

While that nail gun or large saw may be tempt­ing to a child it’s impor­tant to have those tools put up.  Any tool that requires more skill, phys­i­cal power, and knowl­edge to use than a child has should be kept up & away.  Learn­ing should be fun & safe.  This means that we also have our tools, even those that are safe to use with an adult, locked away when not in use.

3. Must hold tools prop­erly and know how to place hands.

Swing­ing a ham­mer in the air is not accept­able.  Putting your hands in the way of a tool is not safe.  Teach­ing chil­dren how to hold tools when mov­ing them from one place to another, hold to hold the tools when they are in use & how to put them away prop­erly is impor­tant.  We con­stantly teach and rein­force safety rules.  They may not always do it exactly right, as you can see even with my own kids it’s close & bet­ter than them going all willy-nilly fling­ing tools in the air.  Again all the fun is lost in the activ­ity and learn­ing process if some­one gets hurt.

4.  Pro­tect your eyes & body.

Wear pro­tec­tive eye gear, don’t wear loose cloth­ing & pro­tect feet from the pos­si­bil­ity of a falling tool.   This is part of cre­at­ing a safe work­space.  Get­ting a shirt-sleeve caught could lead to an injury, this means proper dress across the board. Under­stand­ing how to care for one’s own body helps to under­stand what’s needed to be safe when work­ing with tools.

5. Adjust the work­space for children.

This means low­er­ing the table & if nec­es­sary clamp­ing down the pieces being worked on.  Also, if you have a child who can­not hold a full sized ham­mer buy a smaller ham­mer, this goes for other tools.  Start with smaller tools & softer pieces of  wood, like pine, for chil­dren who are nail­ing items in.

We have found pieces of wood, at home kits, and other small tasks on larger projects have helped the kids all learn how to use tools safely.

Tagged as: family, home depot, homemade, how-to, kids, learning, parenting, safety, tools, wood, workshop safety