FUN FOR THE KIDS!
Hands-on Workshops For Children
Provide your children with the opportunity to explore woodworking and hone essential tool skills!
TOYMAKER workshops offer an excellent introduction to this craft, ensuring children acquire valuable knowledge and hands-on experience.
Explore our diverse range of options and projects tailored to suit every child's age and occasion! From engaging Kindergarten Workshops for ages 3-5, and dynamic School Holiday Workshops to personalized Birthday Workshops for ages 5-12, we've got it all covered. Serving the entire Wellington Region including Wellington City, Hutt Valley, Porirua, Wairarapa, Kapiti Coast, and Horowhenua.
Practical Skills For Life
We have designed this program with a 'can-do' spirit in mind, offering children the chance to work with real tools and acquire a multitude of practical skills. This boosts their self-esteem, confidence, and independence.
Many children will find the use of tools essential in their future careers, as the majority of professions involve working with tools to develop ideas, design, create, and repair.
Through working with tools and resistant materials, children discover how things are made and develop many skills important to success in their future life. These skills include: systematic and critical thinking, the ability to reflect and envision, finding connections and solutions to problems, promoting dialogue, negotiation, and decision-making.
Hands-on Learning
Our workshops integrate mathematical thinking, scientific investigation, and technology. By engaging in hands-on projects, children learn how to safely and efficiently manipulate wood using various tools and hardware.
TOYMAKER woodworking sessions are conducted in kindergartens, preschools, and schools, catering to children aged 3-12. Our program fosters connections across various aspects of learning, supporting education within all strands of Te Whāriki, The New Zealand Curriculum, and aligning with current best practices in understanding how children learn.
Throughout our workshops, children gain fundamental knowledge about tools, work safety, woodworking techniques, and wood properties. They develop skills in observation, prediction, experimentation, problem-solving, and express their creativity in three dimensions. This enriches their grasp of concepts like length, size, balance, and force, deepening their understanding of the world. Additionally, it encourages the development of hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, a sense of precision, as well as communication and language skills.
Through engaging in and successfully completing TOYMAKER projects, children learn how to safely and effectively separate resistant materials using clamps, jigs, guides, saws, and drills. They also gain proficiency in joining timber using fasteners, while utilizing tools such as mallets, hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches. This entrusted responsibility with real tools fosters the growth of self-esteem and confidence in children.
Safe & Fun
Woodwork is a low-risk activity when introduced and supervised correctly. Life is full of risks and challenges, and we need to prepare children to face them by allowing them to take risks within a safe environment.
While our workshops offer plenty of fun and excitement, our program also imparts crucial lessons in respecting potential hazards of working with resistant materials, and emphasizes the importance of caution in specific situations. Our woodworking sessions take place in a purpose-built mobile workshop that we bring with us. We provide everything required to run a safe and productive woodworking session including; a mobile workbench, tools, materials and safety gear.
We maintain comprehensive Risk Assessment documentation and a detailed Health & Safety Guide to ensure that our instructors and all adults supervising the woodworking sessions are familiar with our safety rules.
Sustainability
We provide children with fundamental insights into the skills required for crafting and repairing, fostering a mindset of creation over consumption and disposal. Additionally, we equip young learners with essential knowledge about trees, forests, and sustainability.
Our hands-on learning program counters the current consumerist culture by encouraging children to become makers with a can-do attitude.
TOYMAKER is an eco-friendly learning program. We do not contribute to deforestation or environmental pollution. All wood used for our woodworking projects is non-treated reclaimed pine, sourced locally. We exclusively employ metal fasteners and biodegradable wood glue, avoiding the use of plastics or hot melt glue. In cases where safety requires a glass substitute, we occasionally opt for highly recyclable acrylic sheets.
