Engineering with kids dismantling & create

All the regions're now having summer vacation and such'a vacation can be quite long. My oldest loves to have vacation but misses the challenge he gets at school. Of course I found a great solution for that. I started working with technology for children.

Together we disassembled an old device and created something new out of it. It was a huge success so I am happy to share this activity with you.

Technique with children

Engineering with kids, it really doesn't have to be that hard. Our printer had problems and it was time for a new one. Normally you would clean up your printer but this time I left it in the shed for a while.

I had plans for this old device.

Our little man is always very interested in technology and science. He likes to watch Klokhuis movies on Youtube about ‘how they make things’. He finds it incredibly fascinating to see how appliances work.

So he can spend an hour watching the milking robot on the farm or wants to know exactly how the coffee maker makes coffee. It is not always easy to explain that in ‘children's language’ and often I don't even know it myself. Time to get to work with that.

Disassemble

As you could read I had an old printer in the barn and this became our victim. I grabbed some screwdrivers, pliers and the cordless screw and we could get to work.

First we had to figure out how to get the housing off in order to get to all the technology. After some searching, he found it and skillfully unscrewed the printer.

We got a little further and more and more was revealed of the circuit boards, screws, wheels and other technology in the printer.

Super concentrated sir went to work. We spent almost two hours disassembling because everything had to be taken apart. Whenever we had a part out we would first see if we could disassemble it even further.

Until we had a bin full of loose parts and the table was littered with wheels, rods, plastic and more.

Create

After two hours of disassembling, dissecting and sorting, it was time to make something new with all these beautiful things. I got a few pieces of wood from the shed, a small hammer and some nails and Mr. could get to work.

Despite being only four, he can already handle a nail and a hammer very well. Whenever we needed a small nail I would hold it with a pair of pliers so we wouldn't get blue fingers. What I mentioned before on another DIY project.

Soon the little man discovered that all the wheels had teeth. He figured out himself that he could rotate the gears together to create a chain reaction. I thought it was brilliant thinking and so he made a real machine, as he called the craft himself.

He really liked the circuit boards so these were also added to his machine.

A full morning later we had done a super cool activity and the gentleman was very proud of himself. Win win!

Do you ever do activities with technology and your kids?? Do you have any fun tips?

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