Sam the Builder

Sam is a mechanically minded boy.  I marvel at how different he is from his sister.    I hate to generalize about these kinds of stereotypes, but he clearly sees the world from a different lens than her.  He always wants to know how things work and asks insightful questions to understand the working principle behind things.

This desire to understand how things work also translates into a desire to build and create things.  He loves the plastic marble run (similar to these) he bought from a consignment sale and loves to construct things with Legos.   I think the desire to build and create runs strongly in the male genes in our family.   He takes after his Daddy and Grandpa who are both talented at making things and using existing materials to fix things that I would have deemed beyond repair.

He also loves my Family Fun magazine.  I got the subscription for me, but he will often pull it out, pour through it and tell me he wants to make something he sees in their craft section.

His most recent project was to build a Marble Maze, like this one:

When he saw this, he knew he had to make one for himself.

With help from Daddy, a plywood square was cut, and pencil lines were drawn to mark off the grid.  He and his sister worked together to paint the board.

Then it was time to pound in the nails.   I thought this would be a disaster, but Daddy came up with a plan where the kids could use pliers to hold the nail in place while hammering — much safer for fingers!

After a while, Sam got bold enough to hold his own nails.

Finally, the project was nearly done, it just needed some rubber bands.  Sam also decided it needed a hole to mark the finish point.  Daddy helped drill it.

Voila, his project is finished and he couldn’t prouder!

Neither could we.