Wood Work With Littlies

A few week ago we excitedly purchased two little hammers (from Bunnings), one for each of the girls. We anticipated some hammering fun to happen during that week but it took some time to organise our supplies. As it turns out, leaving our hammering for a few weeks gave us the opportunity to make some lovely gifts for daddy for Father's Day.

Feeling inspired by some blogs I have read recently I wanted to set this activity up with as many unused items we had around the house. This table (kept under the house) was the perfect table for a work bench for the girls and it gave me great joy to see it being used in a different way. Daddy just had to add a few bolts to return it to its once sturdy state. Apparently one of daddy's old housemates owned it and kindly left it behind for him to enjoy. Hmmm....

It was surprising that our reno house didn't have any old bits of timber lying around so I asked friends and family if they had some soft (ish), smooth off-cuts of timber we could collect from them. People are so generous. We picked up a crate full of timber which daddy cut to different lengths for us to use. Thank you Mr Matt and Mrs Susan for the timber!

I figured hammering pieces of wood onto wood might prove to be a bit tricky for my girls at this stage so we started with something very simple. The collage tray was filled with interesting textured items to hammer on to the wood and this seemed to work well to get us started.

Standing up would have helped to put more strength into the hammering.

The hammering was a bit tricky. It took concentration, determination and a fair bit of help from mummy but we got some things onto the wood in the end. Miss M suggested to add painting to their hammering work which seemed to be the perfect idea. Here are the finished products!

You could extend this activity by....

• Singing 'Johnny Works with One Hammer'