Little engineers - how to make a junk robot toy

I have written before about the shortage of STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) graduates in the UK.  I think a great deal of the reason that people don't choose to study these subjects is partly because they are perceived as hard, but also there is a perception that they are boring.

This image of these subjects as hard and boring can overcome if you get to the roots of what a scientist is - an adult who never lost the curiosity in the world that a child has before they get indoctrinated to learn 'old facts' and not ask questions.  There is also the problem that most people don't know what people in these professions actually do - I'm studying Oceanography as part of my degree - currently a section on seawater, and was surprised that by funny coincidence this happens to be what Matt is studying as part of his Masters degree in Engineering.

There is an additional problem now in UK schools in that
children are underdeveloped in certain areas including those to do with
volumes, weights, measures and strengths because they increasingly have no contact with real objects in their play.  Children know how to swish a screen, but have no idea how to make a model that balances without falling over, or make estimates on whether a thing will be heavy or light, weak or strong.  According to a lady I talked to in the summer who gathers information on such things, a growing number of children are now what would have been classed as 'developmentally delayed' in the 70's because they lack such instincts.  Kids are afraid to try things out because they lack the confidence that would normally come from the repetitive play of childhood - handling objects, pouring liquids, building things.

As usual the answer isn't rocket science (pun intended), it's play with real objects.  We have a long history in the UK (and as a species) of inventing things by tinkering about with materials, and this is at the heart of helping your child to develop their creative and scientific abilities.

 The process is really simple - start with a problem that you want to overcome (plus a box full of junk such as old cereal packets, and some glue and tape).  In our case Ollie's problem was that he didn't want Daddy to go to work because he wanted him to stay home and build a tower with him.  The solution he came up with was to invent a robot that could go to work and do Daddy's job for him.  The boys worked cooperatively to put their robot together - Ollie in charge of the tape dispenser because Toby always loses the end of the tape, Toby in charge of putting tape everywhere.  They quickly found that one off-center leg caused the robot to topple over, so they had to find another box the same size to give the robot two legs.  Likewise with the arms - when they tried a big box for an arm the robot fell over, so cardboard tubes were used instead.  The last balancing lesson came with the head - sticking a box to the front unbalanced the robot, so an egg box on the top was decided on.

When happy with the shape, Ollie then pointed out that the robot needed to be metal, so I brought out the foil and the boys wrapped their robot.  Ollie wanted to know how we could be tearing metal since metal is strong, so we talked about how the strength of a material is relative to it's thickness.  He then wanted to know how it was made, so we had a quick search for a video of it being made - there's a great show 'How it's made' which has lots of episodes on YouTube - I searched 'How it's made Aluminium Foil' and quickly found a video showing how the big block of Aluminium had impurities removed, then was solidified again, the block of pure aluminium was then sent many times through heated rollers which pressed it to 5mm, before it was sent through cold rollers which pressed it to the very thin final product.

The final stage of the robot was to make it move and think, but Ollie conceded that he would have to do that bit later when he was 'a bit older and bigger'.

If you look at the actual skills involved though in this simple creative play session it's impressive what kids this age achieve.  They have worked cooperatively and with a high degree of perseverance to produce a toy that looks the way they want and can stand up without falling over - the ability to make an object balance requires an understanding of weight, shape and forces (even if they wouldn't know by these terms that this is what they know).  When something didn't work they searched for a solution both by trial and error and by using their existing knowledge from previous play.  They used their imagination to visualize what they thought a robot should look like, then tried things out until they found a configuration that both looked like their imagined robot and was structurally strong enough to play with.  They researched materials.  They even seemed to understand that this was a prototype and would require further development when they had greater knowledge and skills in the future.  This is no different to what a design engineer or a host of other STEM professionals do in their jobs.

I've chucked a lot of analytic words at describing what they were doing, not to look like I'm over analysing every element of children's play but rather to give an idea of the fact that play is science, and science is play, so lets raise kids who are confident tinkerers and understand that STEM careers are just as fun and accessible to them as any of the other fantastic professions they could aspire to.

Pet rescue literacy game

 This is a game that evolved from a little post box game.  The boys love posting things into our shoe-box post box and this has developed into 'writing' letters to post.  With Ollie's current love of forming real words the next step in the game has been to draw a picture of a cat or a dog and write the word next to it.  He says that the animal is lost and he is posting a letter to the owner to tell them.

Yesterday the game took another step and became a letter to a mountain rescue team to find a lost dog.  Ollie wrote the words he can do by himself (help a lost dog) and then asked me to spell out 'the mountains' for him - I asked if he wanted to write the shorter word 'hills' but he was very insistent it had to be 'mountains'.

He drew his dog and the mountain and helpfully included an arrow showing where the dog was.  He then hid his toy dog on the back of the sofa (the mountain) and delivered the letter to me (the mountain rescue team).  Toby also delivered his letter to me (he's been trying out drawing lines with pens in both hands at the same time) and helped me rescue the dog.  Unfortunately at some point a wizard turned me into a bear, so I spend a lot of time huffing around on all fours trying to catch the boys and (gently) roughhousing, while Ollie grabbed books off the bookcase to try to find a spell to change me back.

So this is all a lot of fun, but it also has a lot of educational outcomes.  The physical benefits are to fine motor control in handling pens and manipulating folded paper into the envelope (quite tricky for little hands).  It is useful for developing literacy and can be easily tailored to the child's level of development - from simple mark making, to drawings, to first words such as writing their name on their drawing and then starting to form other simple words such as 'cat'.  There's a place for copying letters and words in exercise books, but to really engage children in writing and reading they need to see a useful purpose to it, such as labeling their pictures or making up postcards.  This type of game is also a great way to explore narrative in play - the children are making up their own stories as you play together and combining physical objects in their environment with their own imagination.  Encouraging children to describe what they're doing and give you instructions is a useful way to develop their vocabulary too.  But best of all their grown up is spending uninterrupted time paying attention to them and being led by their wishes.  Even the chase and catch element have a benefit because boys especially tend to want to play in quite a physical way and playing with them in this way helps them to learn how to play physically without hurting anyone else or themselves.

I try to build  unstructured play time into our days, where I supply a few props perhaps but then let the boys lead the play.  I think this is really important for bringing up self motivated, self sufficient kids.  If every minute of the day is scheduled into taught classes and adult led activities then when does the child learn to find out things for themselves? I firmly believe in the adage 'only boring people get bored' and that helping children develop (and hold on to) their natural instinct for imaginative and creative play prevents them becoming boring people.

Old catalogues and language skills

Folk who regularly follow this blog will know that Toby is a late bloomer when it comes to his speech.  After a course of antibiotics before Christmas he suddenly started talking, and this is a little post about one of the activities I do with him to ensure he gets focussed time during each day to speak and be heard.  With older brother Ollie engaged in the excitement of cutting up stuff with his own little scissors, Toby and I spent some quality time with a clothes catalogue.

I touch Toby's face to get his attention and say 'Toby, can you choose clothes for Mummy?' (while signing 'clothes' and 'mummy' in Makaton) then started to leaf through the catalogue saying 'this one for mummy?' and waiting for his response.  He says 'no - ah' and gives me a cheeky look until we get to something he likes. 'Da' he says pointing.  I cut the dress out that he has chosen, then he glues it with a gluestick and sticks it on to card.  I say 'I like that dress, that is a pretty dress, thank you' (I sign 'good' 'clothes' 'thank you').

I draw on a round head to give him the idea we are drawing now and say 'Toby, can you draw hands for Mummy?' (signing 'draw' and wiggling my fingers because I can't remember what the sign for hands is).  Toby chooses purple for my hands and scribbles in the right places.  I say 'yes, there's mummy's hands' (signing 'yes' 'mummy' and wiggling my fingers again). 

We repeat this for feet and hair, then go back to the catalogue to choose shoes and a bag, all the time catching Toby's attention to look at me when I speak to him and signing the main words.  Toby takes a long time choosing just the right shoes and bag, and when we find a page with shoes he likes points and says 'da, shoe' and 'da, bag'.  I praise and model what he is saying 'those shoes' and 'that bag'.  We don't correct, just repeat back what he is saying as we would say it.  With the picture finished he proudly says 'look, mummy' which is brilliant as he is now forging ahead with new words and with using words to make simple sentences.  Toby then says 'an Daddy', so I'm happy that he is enjoying this and wants to do a clothes picture of Matt too.

We repeat the process again.  Toby spends even longer picking Matt's outfit.  When both are finished we run through what we have a few times in his favourite 'where's the...' game.  'Where's the dress' etc... is good for showing understanding and feeling good about themselves but I'm consciously pushing a little more now for more than pointing so I look puzzled and point to the lady and say 'who's that', Toby says 'Mummy!', 'and who's that?', 'Daddy!'.  'Toby, what's that?' 'A Bag!' he shouts.

This is a specific example, but it can easily be adapted to any activity your little one enjoys doing with you.  It is also specific to my little lad's speech delay, but is great fun to do with younger children with no speech delay, or even older ones as it is something you can lead into other skills such as literacy.  For example, write the words for the clothes and get your child to draw lines from the word to the picture, or take it further by drawing a line yourself and a box for them to write the word in.  Do it in another language if that's what you're working on - it's the mixture of choosing, cutting out, sticking and talking that keeps the child interested in a way that flash cards never could.


This is really simple stuff, but for a little lad who could only say about six indistinct words a couple of months ago it is really exciting.  Funnily enough for the little monkey one of his first words was 'tuck!' (stuck, as in stuck up on top of something).  Hearing him say 'baubles' and 'tree' at Christmas was astonishing, and to jump from that to the simple sentences he is using now is beautiful to watch. His first sentence was 'ju ju daddy' - 'thank you daddy', copying his big brother being given a drink.

Currently his longest sentence is 'hoh choh choh mik' (hot chocolate milk).  He is certainly finding his voice, shouting 'mummy mummy mamma mamma mum mum...' for an entire half hour car ride home after he dropped something.  I kept having to remind myself that time that it really was brilliant.

I completed an introductory course on Makaton last week and the tutor had lots of wise words that re-enforced what we have been doing, challenged me to do more and informed me with new things to try.  One of the things I find really valuable about using signing alongside speech is that it slows me down, makes me discard a lot of the 'stuff noise' that we fill our speech with and make sure I have eye contact and give full attention while talking to Toby.  It's something that benefits all kids, not just ones with hearing problems or developmental delays. 

Children are like sponges for information because they generally have much greater input from their senses than we do, but the flip side to all this extra information is that they process it more slowly than we do.  So rather than expecting them to process and respond to us in a way they will not be capable of until after their brain reshuffles during their teens, we need to focus on slowing down, giving them what they actually need to know, and giving them time to process and respond.  Apparently their Dads respond well to this approach also.  Rumour has it men don't need to know a blow by blow account of who said what to whom with a task we need them to complete cunningly hidden in the middle.  Who knew?

Festive salt dough decorations

 Making salt dough decorations is a firm favourite of a tradition in many families.  I came across it for the first time last year watching 'Kirstie's Homemade Christmas' on TV and we had great fun, if not the most attractive results.  This year we've refined our technique somewhat and have ended up with some prettier and less soggy decorations.  This is a lovely activity to be done in ten minute bursts, which suits small children's attention spans. It encourages creative play, basic maths skills in measuring, and makes children feel good in contributing to the family's preparations for Christmas.  If you don't celebrate Christmas, the activity is just as good for making fun decorations for any other festivity.


The basic recipe is really simple.  This year I used a recipe provided by my local children's center, but I halved the quantities as we ran out of table salt.  The children's center recipe: 2 cups plain flour. 1 cup salt. 1 cup water.  Mix to form a dough (adjust quantities of water or flour to get right texture).  Model into shapes (not too thick) and cook on a very low heat for several hours.  The models can then be painted.

 The boys helped with measuring out the ingredients, which is really simple in this recipe as you use cups rather than weights.  Don't panic if you don't have a standardised measuring cup (this is a more common measuring technique in America, here in the UK recipes usually give weights in grams, or ounces if it's an old recipe).  Getting it right is about ratios, so as long as you use the same sized container as your 'cup' it doesn't matter - e.g. a 'cup' could be a half filled mug, or a plastic drinking cup, or a small bowl so long as you use the same thing for each measurement.

From our experience last year, getting the dough rolled out fairly thin helps in the drying process later on.  This needed surprisingly little intervention from me as both boys are becoming dab hands with the rolling pin.  Sharing the rolling pin is something they were initially not keen on, but it all builds social skills.  We then shared a star shaped cookie cutter to make the shapes, but any shape you have would work fine.  I'd avoid anything with details that are too fiddly and liable to break off like the thin legs on reindeer shapes.  I then put the shapes on a sheet of baking paper on a metal baking tray into a low temperature oven (about 80 centigrade).  Before you put them in the oven don't forget to make a hole in each one if you intend to string them up - a skewer wiggled around to make a hole worked well, making the hole a bit bigger than you want as they tend to close up a bit in the oven.

To make cleaning up the table more fun, we rolled straight into another messy play activity - rolling toy cars and trains through shaving foam.  If you haven't read about this before, the 'value' cheap shaving foam has the least perfumes and is just soap, so even if your little ones ingest some it is pretty harmless - obviously avoid eyes and use your judgement about when your child is old enough to enjoy this.  I find it helpful to have a clean damp flannel on hand for when one of them does get some in their eye.

The next stage of the 'clean up' tends to cause even more mess, but the laughter is worth it.  The boys get a cloth each to help wipe the table, and then a bowl of warm water on the floor to wash the foam off their toys.  This usually ends up with the boys and the floor soaking wet, so to avoid slipping I try to be prepared with old towels and also supervise closely by getting down on the floor and splashing their toys with them.  In this picture the we had floor was ideal for messy wet play.   It was the old stick-on floor tiles that were underneath the floor we had to remove following our washing machine leak.  I put down new laminate tiles yesterday, which I don't think will take so kindly to being really soaked so this phase of the activity will have to move upstairs to the bath in the future.  The bath is where we end up anyway to make sure the last of the soap foam is removed and everyone is warmed up and dressed in dry clothes.

I baked the shapes for 5 hours, then left them to dry outside the oven, then put them in again for another couple of hours.  It has to be a really low heat as you are just drying them, not cooking them.  We found last year that a higher heat just burns them in patches.  This is the big reason for getting your shapes thin - uneven or thick shapes don't dry well.

When the shapes were dry and cool we painted them with poster paint.  This made the shapes a little soggy and cracked when it dried, so I'm sure someone will have a better alternative, but poster paint is child safe so I'm not worried about an imperfect finish.  Besides which, the following day we then put so much glitter on the shapes it's hard to tell they were painted in the first place.  The final stage (tomorrow) will be stringing them up on very thin ribbon, interspersed with some silvery metal charms we kept from some Christmas crackers.  Another lesson from last year though - if you want to keep the shapes, put them in an airtight container with a desiccant added, for example a plastic tub with salt in it, or sachets of silica gel.  We did not do this and stored them in a cardboard box in the loft with the other baubles.  When we got the decorations down we had a lot of mushy dough shapes sticking the baubles together, oops!