Just Give Them Sticks

The more I observe boys, the more I think they should be spending less time at a desk doing “work sheets” and more time with technical manuals and sticks. Yes, yes, I know we must teach them the three R’s or we are all doomed. But even those can be learned without doing so many actual work sheets. It just gets me that they are so amazing with sticks! And their curiosity about the laws of physics is so unavoidably dangerous. Boys also have an uncanny ability to understand complex technical ideas. Did you ever know a boy who couldn’t sit still and couldn’t STOP TOUCHING EVERYTHING! But you put five of those boys around a table with a pile of odds and ends in the middle and watch out, you are about to see some amazing creations! Weapons of mass destruction and little robots begin to appear. If boys learn so well this way, why don’t schools use it more? Maybe because that kind of thing is hard to grade. Maybe because the teachers don’t feel up to the task. I know I don’t feel quite up to it, but I’m finding it doesn’t matter so much what I am up to doing. Boys will take over in this kind of environment and do most of it themselves.

At the end of the summer this year the boys and I started a robotics club. Not because I know what I’m doing…at all. But because my boys can’t get enough of this stuff and I couldn’t find any robotics groups for kids in my area. I bought the Junk Drawer Robotics curriculum from 4-H and invited some kids. The curriculum is inexpensive and lets the kids actually build all their own components instead of just having them put together a kit. It starts off pretty easy with engineering and design principles and moves into some problem solving and trebuchet building. We are working up to building a simple, air powered robotic arm.

Recently, we had our club meeting and started building our trebuchets. I had spent days researching the subject and trying to build my own lame trebuchet to prepare for the club meeting. I wanted to know what I was doing so I could help guide the group if someone needed help. I finally gave up and got bored with it. Just then my two boys walked into the room, “watcha doin mom?" They grabbed those paint sticks and just put together a couple of catapults and started slinging marshmallows. Wouldn’t you know that’s exactly how the club meeting went too? It was a flurry of industrial activity. (And I was glad I had done my research or I would have been left in the dust). Each boy had at least one new idea that no one else had thought to try. At our next club meeting we had time to see who could launch a payload of marshmallows the furthest. I’ll just tell you, I’m still finding marshmallows behind the furniture.
So, if you know a boy who has “behavioral issues” or is struggling in school. I might suggest, just give him some sticks and let him use his imagination. You may begin to see him in a whole new light.