Start Teaching Your Kids DIY With These Easy Tasks

As parents, it is our job to tech our children everything they’ll need to know to grow up into resourceful, independent adults. Whether it’s teaching them how to prepare food for themselves, showing them how to clean or when they get older how to maintain their car.

One of the things your child will one day thank you for teaching them is DIY, in everyday life being handy with tools is a great advantage to have and will help foster their burgeoning independence. Aside from a boost to their confidence and independence, DIY can help teach your young ones how rewarding hard work can be, setting them up for success later in life.

So today, we have written about some simply DIY tasks for you to do with your children before moving onto bigger projects like playhouses, to help teach them the age appropriate skills needed for DIY!

Let Them Help With Measuring

When starting your young child’s DIY journey, it’s important to start off with small, simple tasks to help them build confidence and get them used to the concept of DIY. A great place to start off is with measuring, this is a good chance to not only pass over some DIY knowhow, but also help them with learning numbers and measurements. So, if you need say a new set of blinds, you can get your child involved with measuring your windows.

All you need for this task is: a tape measure, a pencil and some paper for notes.

Simply show your child how to measure the space you need measuring and let them use the tape measure on the space, then if they’re old enough to read and write, have them note down their measurements for you to use. This may sound like a simple task to us adults, but for a toddler or young child, this can be a big step in building their confidence in themselves by getting them involved in ‘grown up work’.

Build A Bird House (With Supervision)

Woodworking is an excellent skill for your child to have, while it may not be as important as it was back when we were kids, it’s still a useful skill to have and by creating things you’ll find your child feels satisfied after creating something with their hands. A great place to start with wood working is something simple like a bird house made from wood.

For this task, you will need: small wooden blocks to make the structure, some glue to hold it together (or for older children you can introduce them to tools like drills and hammers with supervision) and string to hang the bird house with.

To make your birdhouse, get your little one to stack the wooden blocks in a form of a little square house and then glue the blocks together (if using tools, use an electric screwdriver to secure with screws or a hammer and nails to secure the blocks). Once the blocks are all secured together, glue some string to the top so the house can be hung up, then hang your new bird house in your garden.

Re-Paint Old Wooden Furniture

Next up, we have a task that is sure to excite your young children and give them a feeling of creative control over their home and help you find a use for old wooden furniture you’ve hidden away in the attic. By simply re-painting old furniture with your children, you’ll instil and attitude of not throwing things away unnecessarily, create fond memories and maybe even create a sentimental family heirloom in the process!

All you’ll need for this task is: old wooden furniture in need of TLC (coffee tables, old chairs and storage units are perfect), some sandpaper, paining tools and some wood paint in a colour of their choice.

First, you’ll need to lightly sandpaper the desk to clear any debris, depending on the age of your child you may want to do it for them, but most children over the age of 3 should be fine using sandpaper with supervision. Once you’ve lightly sanded the desk, all that’s left to do is put on a few layers of paint. Once you and your little one are done, you should have a beautiful personal piece of wooden furniture to have around the house.

Create A LEGO Desk Together

Finishing off, we have a spectacularly simple yet rewarding project for you and your little ones to have fun with – building a LEGO desk! Well, you won’t be building the desk itself, more like converting a small old desk into a new LEGO desk, this task should only take a few minutes, but it will provide a space for endless hours of creative play and serve as a reminder to how rewarding DIY is.

All you’ll need is: an old desk, enough LEGO baseplates to cover the desk and some glue (hot glue can work well if you trust your little one with it).

So, to covert your old desk into a LEGO play zone, simply take your LEGO baseplates and glue them to the top of the desk with your child… And that’s it! A simple task, but one that’s sure to excite your children nonetheless!