When a parent first sees in our preschool a five-year-old with a real drill in their hands, they usually react in one of two ways. Either they open their eyes wide and say “well, that’s interesting, I’d never let him do that at home”, or they quietly sigh “this is exactly how childhood should look”. In both cases the reaction is emotional — because the sight of a child holding a grown-up tool, contrary to appearances, touches something very deep in our culture.
In our preschool, the regular sessions with Mr Handyman are one of the most important elements of what we offer. The children measure, saw, drill, hammer — they work with real wood, real tools and real outcomes. The shavings really fly. The nails really go in. And at the end of the session, the child takes home something they built themselves — usually crooked, imperfect, but theirs.
Where the idea came from
The idea of giving children real tools is not new. Maria Montessori, a hundred years ago, was already writing that a child does not need a miniature, plastic imitation of the world of adults — they need real, though scaled-down, access to that world. The Scandinavian and German tradition of forest school took the idea even further, handing children pocketknives, saws and bonfires. In Reggio Emilia in Italy, preschool carpentry workshops have existed for decades, where four-year-olds regularly handle tools that we adults never held until we were eighteen.
What unites all these traditions is one conviction: a child to whom we entrust responsibility takes that responsibility very seriously. A child whom we do not overprotect learns where their boundaries lie. A child who has the chance to feel the weight of a real hammer will understand the force of gravity much faster than a child playing with a rubber mallet.
In the pedagogical literature there is the term “risky play” — play with an element of real risk. Research by Ellen Sandseter from Norway shows unambiguously: children who had regular access to such activities cope better with assessing danger in adult life and are less, not more, prone to accidents. Paradoxically, excessive protection is more risky for a child than controlled exposure to real challenges.
What concretely happens in Mr Handyman’s sessions
Mr Handyman appears regularly, with his whole toolbox and metres of various materials. He is an adult man who works with his hands and knows how to talk to children so that they feel like partners, not patients. This is very important — the child, from the very first minute of the session, is treated like a young craftsman, not an “object” of pedagogy.
Each session begins with a short conversation about what we are going to make, with which tools, and — most importantly — with what rules. The rules are always simple and always the same: hold the tool firmly with both hands, point it away from yourself, work in the designated place, when you put a tool down — put it down, do not throw it. The children learn these rules very quickly because they immediately see the sense of them (wood is hard, the hammer is heavy, mistakes hurt).
Then the work begins. A three-year-old at the beginning may only measure — they place the carpentry ruler against the board, check the centimetres, call out proudly “twenty-three!”. A four-year-old already saws under the supervision of a teacher — with a small hand saw, on a small piece of soft wood. A five-year-old hammers in nails. A six-year-old operates a cordless drill. Each child receives a tool appropriate to their age and their individual readiness — never mechanically, always after observation.
The end result is usually a surprise for the parent. A crooked little shelf. A wooden ladybird house. A bird feeder. A wooden plane made of two slats and four nails. Aesthetically — far from perfect. For the child — priceless. I remember how one of our boys, finishing his time at preschool, took home an insect house he had nailed together himself. Two years later his mother told us that the house still stands in the garden, and the boy checks every week whether “any new tenants have moved in”.
What the child builds when they build something
The most visible effects are of course practical. Hand fitness — grip strength, finger coordination, precision of movement — develops in a way that no educational puzzle could ever match. Working with a hammer is a training of both sides of the body: one hand stabilises the object, the other strikes. Drilling requires even more coordination of eye and both hands, adds the element of pressure control, teaches reading of material resistance.
But this is only the first layer. Underneath, something much more important is happening.
A child who builds something real experiences the full cycle: idea, plan, action, correction, result. This is exactly the cycle that in adult life we will call designing, entrepreneurship, creativity. In preschool we simply call it “building a house for a ladybird” — but neurologically it is the building of the brain’s executive functions, that is, the ability to plan and bring matters to a conclusion.
The child also learns patience in a very tangible form. Wood will not be cut by an act of will. A nail will not go in faster if we hit it harder (usually quite the opposite — it will bend). A drill works slowly and consistently. Each of these experiences teaches the child something that the digital world cannot teach anywhere else: the physical world has its own pace, which cannot be hurried by wishing.
Finally — and for us most importantly — the child builds an image of themselves. “I can hold a hammer.” “I made this little shelf myself.” “Mr Handyman showed me how to do it, and then he trusted me that I would manage on my own.” These are sentences which, in a child’s head, build an identity: I am someone who can. A child who from the age of three accumulates such evidence of their own agency goes into adulthood with a foundation that no school failure can shake.
And safety?
This is the question that always comes first. We answer it concretely:
First, every session takes place under strict supervision — Mr Handyman and the group’s teacher are present at all times, with a proportion of one adult to a small group of children. No tool ever circulates in the room without supervision.
Second, the children work in protective goggles, with selected tools, on specially prepared workstations. Everything is planned with the first contact with the tool in mind, not with the final result.
Third, we introduce particular tools gradually. A three-year-old does not get a drill. A four-year-old does not get a circular saw. We proceed in line with the child’s readiness — most often the children themselves give us the signal that they are ready for the next stage.
A small cut happens rarely. More often there is a print left by a saw — and then we treat it as a natural part of learning, not as a cause for panic. A child who has been hurt once by a saw learns immediately why we hold it correctly. That is a lesson worth a thousand admonitions.
What a parent can do at home
The simplest answer: let the child take part in housework in a more real way than usual. Let a small child hammer in nails under your supervision. Let an older one help take apart appliances. Let them measure when you hang a picture. Let them use a knife under supervision when chopping vegetables for dinner (a blunt one at the start, then an increasingly sharp one as the hand grows up to the task).
You can also create at home a simple “handyman corner” — a piece of soft wood, a few nails, a child-sized hammer, protective goggles. Let the child simply hammer nails into the board. This may seem trivial, but for a five-year-old it is an hour in heaven and at the same time an hour of the purest concentration they are capable of mustering.
The most important thing is that the parent should believe in one thing: the child is ready for this much earlier than we instinctively assume. Our caution most often concerns ourselves, not the child. And a child who receives our trust gives it back with interest.
What it is all for
Because learning through play is what the Dwarfs love most. We do too. But behind that slogan stands something much more serious — the conviction that a child who has the chance to work with their hands, to use real things, to feel the resistance of materials and the weight of a tool, grows up differently from a child shut into a world of plastic imitations.
They grow up with faith that they are agents. They grow up with manual skills which today are increasingly rare. They grow up with a relationship with the physical world that does not end at the edge of a phone screen.
And even if our children grow up to be programmers, doctors or journalists, that hour a week spent with Mr Handyman is just as important for them as any other. Because before a person decides who they want to be, they must first feel who they are. And it is best felt through the hands.