Psychedelic Bird House.

      Years back, I always liked working in my shop with my kids.   Maybe I was lucky that they were all boys and kind of liked playing with power tools and putting stuff together.   Today, they have their own little work areas and tend to play with wood, although their projects usually entail a remodeling project either small or large.  (Today they don't play in the shop that often with their dad.   I miss that as they were great slaves to have around when it was time to do the sanding part.   Yep.  I think they loved running that sanding block...)

    This week I want to share a small story about shop time that is spent with the grand kids.    I enjoy every minute of it.  Although I think their mothers worry about me letting them run power tools.  I'm careful about that.  (I have to be or grandma will take my toys away.)

Blair Lillian Jack  -  Age six

    The thing about grand kids is that while each one is a little different in their thought process, they all want to build their project in about five minutes.   So part of the teaching process is that if we spend a little more time we can building something a little nicer.  

   Blair was staying with us for a short while so we had a little time to work up a project.   To be honest we worked up three or four different projects, but this one we managed to spend the most time on.   I wished I had taken a few pictures at the start.

   This was a fun project for me as it was Blair's idea to build a bird house and even though I had my thoughts as to what a bird house should look like,  I simply supplied the boards, ran the table saw, and cut the wood as per her specs.    Once in awhile I would suggest that maybe we should do it a little different, but her having the woman genes in her system felt that we should do it her way.  (Yep.  That female thing to control the male species must start sometime before they are six years old.)

  All kidding aside, I like to give all of them the freedom to be creative.   My input in this project amounted to the size of the hole that should be drilled into the front for the birds to enter and the overall size of the bird house.  For the rest of this project it was Blair's lead.
  For me it was a small investment of a bunch of scrap wood and  a few old jars of paint that were going to dry up anyway.    I did let Blair run the power screw driver as we screwed the pieces together.  I think every kid likes to run that power drill.   (Heck! I like to run the power drill.)

      And there we are.     This will make a nice little home for some mother wren to keep her little birdies in.    There is a small  "Welcome Birds" note on the side,   smiley faces from top to bottom, and when it comes to be Christmas time --- Hey! --- We are already decorated up.  

      She did a great job and I will guarantee that if a tornado goes through her home town area, that bird house will still be intact.  

      Time keeps moving on and the grand kids keep growing.    I'm getting the feeling that next time we will have to work on some project where we start training on those sanding blocks.   Hmmm.   Can't wait.  


 

Listen up all you birds!   This is where you go in.