Recently, we were driving to an out of town destination, when our Bluey (4 yrs old) declared that he would be taking apart a little wind-up toy robot. We’ve explained many times to Bluey that if you deconstruct a toy, it may not work the way it did originally– if you even manage to put it back together. But Bluey’s urge to tinker is far greater than his desire to keep his toys intact.
So, he commenced to tear apart his robot. We couldn’t see much of the progress, as we drove along. About 10 minutes into his project, we heard a distinct whirring noise from Bluey’s car seat area. It was the sound of the robot’s wind-up motor. We turned around, expecting to see that Bluey had simply liberated the motor from the robot case. Instead, he was holding in his small hands, a plastic wall jack from a different tinkering project.
“It’s my modification!” Declared our Bluey. Once we got over the shock of hearing him use the word, modification, we were equally surprised to see the results of his work. Bluey had carefully and successfully transplanted the robot’s motor into the wall jack.
When we give children the space to be who they are and to follow their bliss, when we let them explore and give them the time to create anything they desire, the results tend to be astounding.