This was published 8 months ago
‘Does a spirit level measure happiness?’ The cute things kids ask during woodwork
Building a stick fence and cubby house provides a bunch of kids – and one grown man – with some lessons in collaboration.
As we work, I tell the children how my youngest boy once thought a spirit level was an instrument to measure happiness. Credit: Paolo Lim/illustrationroom.com.au
The bell rings and they run to me, calling out my name, wanting jobs to do, to explore what they’ve helped make. “Can we hammer things?” asks a boy. “Can we help, can we help?” offer a group of girls. And they do; prising old nails from timber, guiding the blade of a handsaw, tightening clamps, using a tape measure, a square edge.
All the while, there are questions. “What’s a spirit level?” asks one, and I tell how my youngest boy once thought it an instrument to measure happiness. I say how with a spirit level and imagination you can build almost anything.
“Do you do this every day?” asks a girl. A boy offers: “My uncle can put this on Instagram.”
At a primary school working alongside children – five-, six-, seven-year-olds – making a garden space with them and their parents, what I’ve come to understand is this: children are keen always for a job to do – it is in their nature to be helpful – so listen to them and much can be learnt.
Listening. A verb, a doing word, has an etymological root in the wayback Icelandic word hlust, meaning ear. It’s an activity I’m not always good at, but an old dog and new tricks, and here’s a place to let others speak, give them a voice, let them say what’s on their mind.
Our task is to finish building a stick fence, a playground feature to showcase how a school community can shape its own spaces. We’d organised a bring-a-stick-to-school day – and the children, their families, responded with gusto. A whole forest of sticks arrived, like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane, carried, dragged and placed one-by-one in a pile that became the wonderful shape of a giant bird’s nest.
With leftover materials, I suggest we make a cubby house. The children like the idea, are eager to help. I ask them to come back at lunchtime.
A first rule of listening is to offer silence. With morning classes spilling outside, with a kindergarten next door, I leave power tools idle. To cut notches in hardwood fenceposts, I use instead a handsaw. If the children are to hear me work, I’ll give them a sound as old as the Iron Age: metal teeth drawn across timber’s grain.
“The wood smells really good,” says a girl. “It smells a bit like tomato sauce,” says another.
“What’s the magpie’s name?” a child calls out in the playground, observing a bird above. Others shout their names. “India! India! India! Marlowe! Marlowe! Marlowe!”
I tap a chisel with a mallet, and the effect is pleasing – it always is – then give the fillets of split redgum to the children. Ask them to touch it, observe its texture, colour, put it to their nose. “The wood smells really good,” says a girl. “It smells a bit like tomato sauce,” says another.
I introduce them to nail pliers, show how to use them, then leave them on the ground, let them test their dexterity, their bodies, feeling for the joy of leverage. They pick up the pincers, try them, put them back on the ground, return, try again. In the mind’s eye of little people, a tool is a magical thing. May they one day appreciate the pleasure of a well-weighted Estwing claw hammer.
Sixteen children arrive at lunchtime to help build the stick cubby house – and the whole of my roundabout professional career comes to this. The beauty of a stick. The function of a stick. The curiosity of a stick. Giving children an opportunity to create something from nothing, with sticks.
I offer instructions, suggest they’re all leaders and must work co-operatively, then watch and listen as they place our materials, one at a time, onto a frame. “It really is starting to take shape.” “It’s a tepee.” “It’s a good creation.” “It’s a tent, a tent made out of sticks.” “It’s an indigenous tree fort.”
“I made that,” a boy tells his friend. “I actually made that.”
They’re proud of what they’ve done, admire their handiwork. They step into it, take turns at being within its embrace. “I wanna go inside.” “That’s cool.” “The grade fives ‘n’ sixes can’t even fit in here.”
“It’s fabulous,” says a grade 5 girl, inquiring into the commotion. “Is it structurally safe?” asks her friend, a future engineer.
In a notebook, I write down what they say, leaving pauses for them to fill, empty spaces. They ask what I’m doing. I think how I’m listening with my ears, but as an act also of curiosity. I am listening for their thoughts, ideas, with an open heart, giving them the time and a place to voice parts of who they are, how they think, what’s on their precious minds. So I’m obliged to write this down verbatim, as a last word.
A young boy, scurrying back to class after lunch, turns and asks: “Why’s your name Dugald?” I do not answer.
“It sounds like doodle,” he says. “That’s the name of a penis.”
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