Wood burning is a wonderful craft hobby. I remember when I was a child and would use the heat from the sun and carve words into wood. The other day I had the opportunity to share this beloved past time with my son, although it was raining outside we were still able to do this craft using a wood burning tool. You can find this tool at most crafts stores, I saw one the other day at Jo Ann Fabrics. The wood burning tool that is available in the Studio was purchased at Imagine Childhood.
I have this activity set up on the shelf in the Wood Working area. I set it up so that the child would choose a piece of wood and then ask me for assistance. As I assist and observe and the child performs the work diligently and safely they can begin to work with this activity on their own. In the event that the child has had previous wood burning experience we would review the safety precautions necessary to complete this work independently and they would demonstrate their knowledge for me using a "test" piece of wood. When my son, DJ worked with this activity we did it together, but after a few days he was independently working. DJ is nine years old, I also made sure that younger children were not in the same area as he was while working with the wood burning tool.
This is a picture of the test wood. I have it as part of the activity so children can become confident while beginning to learn wood burning, and to practice on before beginning their "real" work.
After a couple days DJ was making gifts for Father's Day.
As each child begins to be a master of their work they will learn to make carbon copies of drawings to use to trace onto wood using the wood burning tool. The examples above came with our wood burning tool.
This is also a great practical life activity as well as language activity. It wasn't too long after DJ was wood burning names in wood that he followed up practicing his cursive handwriting. He has plans to make more wood burning gifts and thinks cursive writing would look really cool.
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