Nails and screws and cardboard boxes

For this activity we used old cardboard boxes (sturdyish ones like wine boxes or diaper boxes), some largish nails that we had left over from making batteries out of lemons and potatos (I'll get around to posting about that one day), some old wood screws (the nails and screws were put in the yoghurt pots, so every kid had his or her own stash). screwdrivers (phillips) and instead of hammers, because a)we only had one and b)it was bloody heavy, we used rocks from the garden for hammering. By the way, yes, everything is covered in dried sidewalk chalk from earlier play(the rocks, the floor and even the outside walls in a later picture, not to worry though, it hoses off) I marked a load of dots in the tops of the boxes and the kids used the rocks to hammer the nails in on the dots, then they pulled the nails out and used the holes as a guide to start screwing the wood screws in. Both my girls have used screwdrivers a lot recently with different projects and the lads loved this activity too. They all got the clockwise to screw in and anticlockwise to screw out thing by the end.

They stuck at this with minimal interference from me for what must have been approaching two hours. My job seemed to be merely fetching more nails and screws. They were so into it that we ran out of screws and I had to resort to giving them a box of white plastic coated hooks that had screw ends to keep going with.

As usual, the combination of being allowed to play with two things that they usually aren't (rocks and nails) meant that this was a very popular activity. I think they inadvertently got a lot of skills from this though and it was free because we had all the stuff lurking in the garage. Yay free! I'm just going to pile the boxes in the garage and if they ask to do it again tomorrow or next week then I'll turn the boxes upside down and give them some smaller screws and nails and see how they do with something a little more fiddly. Mwah ha ha!