What Making Things By Hand Does to Your Kids' Brains (Why It Matters More Than You Think)

Summer has a different rhythm. The school year slows down, the calendar opens up, suddenly there's something that is in short supply the rest of the year. We have more time. And I think one of the best ways to spend that time is teaching our kids how to make things with their hands. Making things by hand is doing far more than teaching a practical skill. It's shaping the way our kids' brains learn and solve problems. And in a world that's constantly competing for our children's attention, I think this matters more than ever. This summer has been full of projects around our house. We, of course, have our garden. And right here, our two daughters have this patch of peas that they grew themselves. They are ready to pick. And so they went out there, gathered all of them, and we were able to set them aside to eat. This is a project they did all by themselves. And I think it's really rewarding for them to see it through from beginning to end, especially when you start those plants from seed. Some other projects we've been working on are just updating the paint. Some of our rooms need a freshening up. And our daughter has been doing her weekly bake sale. So every Friday, she's making sourdough loaves, she's making cinnamon rolls, and getting that up there to put out all day Saturday. We've also been working on some sewing projects. And I'm going to show you that a little bit later in this video. We made some pillow covers for our sofa pillows. Our daughters also go to the thrift store. And when something doesn't fit just right, or they want to change it up a little bit, they will make it into a sewing project to make it exactly how they want. Two years ago, we had a sewing class at our co-op, which I thought was really unique, because it approached sewing from a different perspective. Rather than learning how to follow a pattern, they looked at something and how it was made and had to think backwards on how to copy that project. So they made pillowcases, they made some small handbags, and a couple other projects. But I love the way it approached it by taking something that you already like, perhaps an apron, a skirt, or a pair of pants, and then thinking backwards to how it was made and copying it in your own fabric that you've chosen. It was, it just really helped the kids problem solve and think through how pieces are put together. If this is your first time on my channel, hi, my name is Sheri. I'm a Christian married to my high school sweetheart. We have 10 children, and we homeschool all of them. They're ages 21 down to three. We have two graduates, another one graduating this year. I love encouraging other families in homeschooling here on my channel and on the blog, ourlifehomeschooling.com. In my course, Beyond School, the Home Education Breakthrough, I share with parents the complete approach I've refined in over 16 years of raising and educating our 10 kids. So you can build a home education lifestyle that works for your family. You can find the link for that in the description box below. Over the years, our kids have done a lot of projects. None of these things are extraordinary. They're just ordinary family projects, but that's exactly why they're so valuable. When a child is making something with their hands, their brain is doing something very different than when they're simply consuming entertainment. They're paying attention, close attention, they are noticing the details. They have to measure carefully because if they don't get it right, then they have to go back and do it again. They're following through with steps and thinking ahead. If something doesn't fit, they have to stop and ask, why didn't that work? And then they have to try again. We live in a world designed to interrupt us every few seconds. Notifications, videos, the constant promise that something more exciting is going to happen with the next swipe. Making something by hand slows the brain down and it asks the mind to do the opposite of this, to focus on one thing, to work through the frustration and finish what we started. That's an incredibly valuable skill, not just for woodworking or sewing, learning a craft itself, but for learning anything in life. I talked about this a little bit more last week in the video I did where I talked about choosing an analog childhood, how analog living makes kids happier. I'll leave the link for you if you'd like to check it out. Over the years, our kids have learned all kinds of practical skills. They've recovered our dining room chairs, helped in the garden. We do a lot of preserving food. They help with all parts of that. Paint projects. We've done some sewing together. My husband's really good at woodworking. He's made so many projects in our house and so often he'll just take a child aside and help them make a little shelf that they can put on the wall and put some trinkets on. One time he helped our son make a stool that we use in our bathroom and now I use it in the garden. So just some things that are handy and that we actually use. Another thing we did this week was to can the chicken broth from the chickens we processed last week. So we boiled all this up. The kids helped us take all the meat off the carcasses which actually fed our family dinners for almost a week. We saved a lot of them for that and then we used the bones for broth which we canned and we'll have that this winter. Another project that we started on this week was making pillow covers for our sofa pillows. This is something I've wanted to do for a while so I took the kids out to the fabric store a couple days ago, picked out what I wanted and then I sat down and worked with our daughter Julia in making these pillow covers. We found a video tutorial online for a simple envelope pillow cover and it really was simple. I'm going to leave the link for you below. Just because we like to do a lot of hands-on projects doesn't mean we don't use the internet. We especially use it for things like this so we can learn how to put different projects together. I was having trouble with my sewing machine and I had to go on and watch a video about the different functions so because I had it on the wrong setting. So this was the project this week but our kids have done so many projects over the years. I think of the time that they cut down a whole bunch of reeds and braided them and then used some kind of glue to form them into baskets. Another time we had a whole bunch of leftover burlap and my other daughter made a wreath out of it. So these aren't just hobbies that the kids have. Each of these projects is teaching them patience, problem solving, creativity. They have to learn to persevere when things don't work right. When a board is cut too short or a seam is crooked, they learn that mistakes aren't failures. They're just part of the process. And even with this project, I couldn't get my machine to work at one time and I had to stop and persevere and figure it out. And my daughter was right beside me seeing that whole process. In a world where so much entertainment is instant, creating something with your own hands is becoming surprisingly rare. That's one of the reasons I think it matters more than ever. Research has shown that hands-on activities engage multiple areas of the brain at the same time. Kids are planning, measuring, experimenting, then they have to adjust when things aren't right, and seeing the results of their decisions in real time. They're learning that effort creates something valuable, even if they hit snags along the way. And that's a lesson that reaches far beyond the actual skill they're learning. So how do you get kids interested in making things? I think one of the best ways is, first of all, probably the most important, is simply just to do some projects yourself. I've noticed this over and over again. The moment I pull out my sewing machine, it's not long before I have a couple kids wandering over asking what I'm making. They want their own machine. They want their own project. And before I know it, they're cutting fabric and trying to play with my needles. And they just want something to do. They want to be a part of it. Kids are naturally curious about the things they see us enjoying. You don't have to convince them with a lesson. Your example is enough. I remember as a young girl when I went to visit my grandma for a week, and she taught me how to make my own dress. We used a pattern. We went all the way through, from start to finish. And I think that was just a little seed in me that gave me a love for creativity, for making things with my hands. And so that's what happens when our kids see us working with our hands and doing projects. The second thing that's made a huge difference for us is limiting the competition of screens. If there are video games or constant entertainment available every minute of the day, making something by hand can seem slow by comparison. But when those distractions aren't constantly calling for their attention, kids start looking for things to do. They build forts. Our kids did this last week. I went down in the basement and I didn't even recognize it because they had taken all the cushions, sheets, blankets off their beds, and they had built this amazing fort. They had spent so much time down there. They'll take time to sketch in their sketchbooks. They'll go out and dig holes. They'll want to use a hammer with wood. They'll want to try a sewing project. So boredom isn't always something to avoid. Sometimes it's exactly what opens the door to creativity. The third thing is simply having materials available. You don't need to have an elaborate craft room. We don't have anything like that. We just have a lot of materials like fabric scraps, pieces of wood, paint, basic sewing supplies, paper, cardboard, glue, some hand tools. When materials are easy to reach, the kids are much more likely to experiment on their own. Not every project has to be Pinterest worthy. Some of the best learning happens when children invent something completely on their own. However, I have used Pinterest here and there with some of our kids just to give them ideas. Sometimes looking at something can just also inspire you. So we've also used some of that, but it's not the core of what we do. We just have a lot of materials on hand. I think one of the best things this does for our kids is build confidence. They're able to look at something in hand that they made and to think, I didn't know how to do this, but now I do. Or to be able to show a friend or a grandparent something, a project that they made themselves. Skills build confidence and it helps them want to try more projects. We try to make these kinds of things parts of our lives all year, but if I'm honest, summer just gives us much more time to say yes to it. Projects don't have to be squeezed into an already busy schedule. One thing that's helped me get some of these things done is to just do one thing at a time. Just start with something, no matter how small it is, because once you get in motion, that really gets you going. The first thing I did for this project was taking the kids to the fabric store. Once I was there, I was really inspired and wanted to get this done. So we came home and we made it happen because we had the material in hand and I had an idea that I wanted to see through. So I just want to encourage you that if you have something like this, that it's been on your mind, you want to try it with your kids to get it done, just to pull out the paintbrushes or the sewing machine or your favorite recipe and sit down and start it. Make something together. When we finished this project, the best moment was giving the pillow to my daughter so that she could put it in the envelope cover and just to see her face at the project that she had made from start to finish. The cool thing was when we finished this, we were both full of ideas of other projects that we wanted to try. I don't know if we'll have the time to do them, but at least it got our creative juices flowing. I hope this video encouraged you. If so, please like and subscribe. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.