As a summer camp expert, I research and visit many, many camps and programs to learn more about them. The one thing I always look to understand is what kind of life skills they are being taught.
An article in today's NY Times, Big Tools for Little Hands, that discusses woodworking for kids, clearly struck me as a physical skill that teaches many wonderful life lessons. So many of the contributors offered sage advice, I want to share some of these wise nuggets:
- Kids spend too much time interacting with perfect interfaces that they need to understand how perfection is achieved by problem solving with their hands
- Give kids the opportunity to build and create things to allow them to express their imagination
- Children are inherently exploratory; previously limited by their imaginations, now it seems so to some extent by their parents
- Lenore Skenazy, of Free Range Kids, chimes in: we've sort of been brainwashed as a culture that our kids are the least competent generation to roam this earth. In every other era, the children were there to help the family survive, as soon as they could
- Parent and teacher supporters of woodworking skills believe they also teach students how to overcome setbacks
- Children are crying out for opportunities to use their creative mind to take creative risks. Woodworking and art supply that
- And the writer ends the article with: There are opportunities all over the country for children to learn building skills - including summer camps (yes!). But be forewarned: Participants may come home with an expanded sense of can-do!
Parents need to let go more and allow their kids to explore the world around them, 'build' their future. And let's face it, woodworking is also a lot of fun (it's one of my favorite areas to explore when I go camp touring:).
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