Sharp Knives + Children = Life Skills and Confidence
Sarah Allen • September 21, 2017
When is the right age to allow your child to use 'proper' tools? I think, maybe, I've been super cautious about this. My children are 9 and 7 and only started chopping vegetables with kitchen knives last year! They did chop mushrooms with plastic knives as toddlers; I remember them sat in their highchair with mushrooms rolling around being cut into chunks for tea (I even remember feeling relieved to be getting some help!). They then moved on to cutting veg up with table knives when they were a bit older.
I think a career in education and early years settings where everything required a written risk assessment has made me look at activities with worried eyes. However, recently the (maybe obvious) realisation has come to me that if children are not given the right tools for the job they can not complete the task properly so therefore may struggle and give up. An adult sized tool may be too big and difficult to manipulate, maybe like an adult trying to knock a nail into a piece of wood using a croquet mallet! Or it could be really frustrating for a child to use a blunt knife that you or I would struggle to cut anything with. Then there are those 'toddler safe' plastic scissors which are almost impossible to use to cut paper! If you have any of those I recommend you put them in with the play dough instead where they actually work.
For his last birthday, I bought my nephew proper child-size workshop tools
(this is not an affiliated link, I just think these tools are great) which he can use to make things for himself out of wood or help around the house. One of my children loves to bake and recent presents have been biscuit cutters and a palette knife which were received enthusiastically. My other child enjoys a bit of gardening, using secateurs to cut back our overgrown garden (this is a never ending task, mostly because no one else seems to enjoy doing it!). In the photo my children are helping cut up beans. They loved it! It was great to see their sense of accomplishment and it was brilliant they were able to complete one of the jobs that needed doing. We had a glut of beans from the allotment which have now been chopped and frozen and hopefully this might encourage the children to actually eat them when they are cooked! I think it's a win, win! The children are engaged in learning skills and jobs get spread out amongst the family members. This approach could be rolled out more in schools. Often children have jobs such as taking the register to the office or sharpening pencils and generally they love this responsibility. However, maybe this could be extended to include tasks such as painting a classroom wall, maintaining the school grounds, helping to fix a broken bench etc.
What do you think?
What do you think?
My shoulders ache; my body is tired. The smallest of tasks feel mammoth. My body craves rest but my mind has different ideas. It wants me to think, work out what to do, problem-solve and worry. I fight to quieten it but the truth is I haven't enough energy. I haven't even enough energy to put on a load of washing in the machine but my kids need clean school shirts. I haven't enough energy to make packed lunches but my kids need to eat. I check what homework they have got, lay the table for dinner, load the dishwasher, make sure the guinea-pigs are fed. My husband, thankfully, makes dinner otherwise I don't know how we would eat. The entire day is like walking through treacle. I cry in sheer exhaustion. The bare minimum is too much. Then I repeat this day after day, year after year. This is surviving, getting through each moment, each day, each year until many have passed and I can no longer remember how living truly feels. How it felt to have cancer-related fatigue and cancer-related PTSD. Thankfully, I don't have many days like this any more, though I can have a run of them during times of stress, when menstruating and after socialising (I'm still not used to it and find it very tiring). The cancer-related fatigue has gone but my energy levels are still a lot lower than they were before my cancer diagnosis and I'm impacted by PTSD on an, almost, daily basis. This has lessened and is becoming more manageable but is triggered by stress and tiredness. You can see the cycle I can get trapped in here. I'm sharing this during Breast Cancer Awareness Month to raise awareness of the long-term impacts of being someone who has had cancer. Also, please check your breasts /chest. It's tough living with the impacts, mostly mental and emotional now, of cancer but I'm, of course, very grateful to be here. Early detection of cancer means outcomes are likely to be better. I found my breast cancer by chance whilst washing . Don't leave it to chance, check today and make it a monthly routine.
In a world of car-dominating towns and cities, what happens if people, plants and animals are put first?
I'm eating it, crunching it between my teeth. It's on my coffee cup, it's in my hair and my eyes. My phone has a sprinkle of it's grittiness and so has my coat! It's covering the road and is continuing to swirl across from the beach, Coating my camper van, no doubt! The beach has been flattened. It looks smooth and new. Footprints covered as soon as they are made. A few brave walkers head into the wind, hoods up and heads bowed, Walking with determination. Nature is powerful and strong in all her wildness.
I'm going to share a little about my garden, in case you are interested and so you might be able to support me in rewilding it and making it more nature friendly. The back garden is mostly lawn. We need to keep it that way as half of it is used for the guinea-pig run, rotating it every few days. This half has currently got lots of lesser celandine, which are good for pollinators. The plant mostly dies off by the time its warm enough for the guinea-pigs to be outside. I have to pull up any remaining plants and anything else that is toxic for them to eat. The other half is wilder and left uncut. A greater variety of plants grow including daisies and ragwort. We keep it as lawn so a tent can be put up for the kids. I also like to put a blanket down and sit on it (once it's drier). Around the edges of the lawn is left fairly wild but we also grow strawberries. The strawberry patch was used by hedgehogs last year to forage for invertebrates, I should think because it was unweeded it provided a lot more for them. Though, I may have to weed it a bit this year to allow the strawberry plants to grow. The front garden was block paved by previous owners. I've got pots growing food and some with flowers. I'd like to increase the amount of food I grow in this area. I use the front garden for this as it has lots of sunshine. I'd also like to increase the plants for pollinators and have bees and butterflies constantly flying from flower to flower. That's me, how about you? What's your garden like? Extract from the Changemaker membership which I run from my Patreon page (there's also a private FB group). We are starting our new focus: Rewilding our gardens and incorporating rest as we move into the, often, busier seasons of spring and summer. It's a form of gentle activism within a supportive community and you're invited! Join for 7 days (it's free!), a month, all spring or more. Any questions? Just ask.
This was a pilgrimage I took last year at Imbolc. I found using the energy of the rising spring was the right time to think about the new year and to let go of some of the things that were no longer serving me.
