Do-It-Yourself!

I've always enjoyed tackling home improvement projects, but have generally shied away from electrical work because of the whole risk of electrocution thing. A couple weeks ago, however, I tackled the job of trading out a half dozen regular light switches for dimmers. As DIY projects go, it's a classic, hardly worth boasting about, but I nevertheless felt proud of myself and so, as a 62-year-old man, I called my father who is my DIY role model.

I grew up with art on the walls created by my father. For instance, he tried out Jackson Pollack's drip-dribble technique on a small canvas that hung in our den. He reupholstered a living room chair. He made a game room table with an inlaid chess board. He invented a football-themed board game based on statistics that were activated by a roll of the dice, predating Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy football by decades. He built an electric train table in the garage that could be folded up to make room for the car. He undertook glass cutting, stained-glass, donut making, and ice cream churning. Not to mention all the day-to-day fix-it projects.

Of course he came by it naturally. Both my parents grew up on Midwestern farms where they produced most of their own food, repaired their own vehicles and farm machinery, made their own games and toys, and, as Dad mentioned in our conversation, sewed and mended their own clothing.

Dad was the youngest of five children, four boys and a girl, and as such, much of the clothing he wore growing up were hand-me-downs, mended time and again, until they were beyond repair, whereupon they were used to make rag rugs and other useful things. In his book Secondhand, journalist Adam Minter writes: "The ideas that a garment or other object was a resource that should be renewed at home was eroding. In the process, the sentimental value associated with clothing declined as quickly as the material value. After all, it's easier to discard a store-bought shirt than one made at home by a mother, a wife, or a sister."

As a preschool teacher, I try to imbue my classrooms with this sort of DIY mentality. It's a place, not for consuming stuff, but rather for finishing or continuing to use stuff. Much of the curriculum supplies, the stuff of our program, are hand-me-downs in the sense that they've come from the attics, garages, and cellars of the children's families. Of course, we purchase paints, paper, tape, and tools, but the bulk of what we interact with are objects with a history, things that were once something else, belonging to someone else, but are now ours to transform with our hands and curiosity. 

In the same spirit, I've always tried to schedule maintenance calls for when the children were present. We once made a plumber's day when the entire class came into the bathroom to watch him install two new toilets. When a chunk of concrete needed to be removed to make way for our outdoor stage, we got to watch, hear, and feel the jackhammer (from a safe distance, of course). Even when we purchased new, super-sturdy outdoor furniture that needed to be assembled, we did it together at the workbench over the course of a week. Likewise, if there was something to be repaired, like the cast iron water pump or a cherished plaything that needed some TLC, I did it on the workbench with the children gathered around. 

At one point, a parent donated an old wooden row boat which we plunked in the center of our sandpit. We painted it, we tried to preserve it, but between the rough play and the elements, the  wood, over the course of a few years, inevitably began to soften. Soon parts were breaking off. Slowly at first, and then suddenly, it disappeared entirely under the sand, although enterprising diggers with a memory of that old row boat, would occasionally unearth relics of a bygone time. Our worm bin is similar place for watching stuff (foodstuffs and yard waste in this case) return to the earth.

Our culture of store-bought commodities designed to be trashed rather than repaired and repurposed has made it increasingly rare for our children to witness how our everyday things transform themselves over time, perhaps picking up a few dings, dents, and rents along the way, perhaps become threadbare or finicky or rusty, but also becoming a part of the story we're living. Our personal histories, at least in part, are stored in objects that have been with us for a long time. 

When we care for objects, when we repair and repurpose them, and especially when we make them ourselves, we transform soul-less commodities into treasure.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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