Hands On Education

One of the things that I enjoy, if you've been to my blogs in the past, is doing things myself! That comes in many different forms; fixing cars, fixing the house, building things and a lot of other things that are just generally involving me learning or using my hands to do something for myself. I think that it's in short supply with a lot of people nowadays! I would like to think that is changing though, I have seen a bunch of people doing work on their own so that's good to see.

What I love, and the little man loves as well, is being able to have our son there with me to do the work! It makes it far more enjoyable when he's there, even if his attention span isn't that long. I value the time spent with him, showing him the different components of things like today. We spent a lot of time learning the different pieces of the car. On the schedule today: brakes! I took the car to get a recall taken care of and they gave me the typical story of "this and this are almost broken!!!!!111 you need to fix it today!!" and I acknowledged their money-grab but said no thanks. I've been working on cars since I got my license, it's a lot of fun and saves money for sure. It might not save a lot of time since we have to learn things but that's okay, someone has to learn!

I have been planning on the fixing day for a week or two, trying to find a day that the weather was going to hold out and give us some enjoyable time. Got a day in the low 70's! It was great. What I was explaining to him was the importance of setting up a job site so that it's easy to do your work. You lay out your tools and organize the workspace so that it's efficient and easy to do what you need to do. You don't want to be walking all over the place looking for one particular wrench or something. Keep it concise and neat and you'll work a lot smoother! He was helping me set everything up. The tool boxes he loved since he doesn't get to go in those ones often, they are full of dirty stuff and not something I let him play with. We set up our space here.

I try not to shy away from letting him do things that he can do without too much risk to himself or getting hurt. The scrapes and bruises one can get are fine but you don't want to put them into a situation that can get them really hurt. I put the jack here in the right spot and had him jack it up on his own. I showed him that if he stands up and pushes down on it, he can raise the whole car by himself! He was amazed. I put my finger at one point on the wheel well and showed him that each time he pushes the bar down, the car goes up and my finger stays where it is. He was shocked how the machine worked to raise the car. I know him and I will have a lot of fun with physics and science with this type of stuff, the energy and all that involved with raising a car is crazy!

I also had him undo all of the nuts after I broke the seal on them, save one so that the tire wouldn't fall off and squish him lol. He did great! He figured that using the lug nut was easier than just using his fingers so he was using that the whole time. Enjoyed that he worked the situation out to be efficient rather than a brute.

Hard to see here but he was using the ratchet to undo one of the bolts on the brake caliper clip. The clip is what holds the caliper onto the brake pads so that it's both on the frame of the car but also able to fit the other components needed for disc brakes.

Here the little man was helping me hang the brake caliper. I was showing him the different parts of the brakes, the suspension and control modules of the car. He was having a blast learning the different pieces of it. I told him the importance of hanging the brake caliper by a wire or something so that the caliper isn't hanging by the brake line otherwise you can tear the line and end up costing a lot of money replacing the line!

The form of education here was a bit different but it reminded me of shop class when I was in high school. I loved shop class, even though I was a bit of a dumbass at the time and didn't really take the time to appreciate it. I want to bring these labor things into our lives as much as we can because it builds a strong base for what can become a job later in life or a hobby like mine. He loves tools, hands-on work and doing things for himself so he should hopefully do something like this when he gets older but you never know. My wife and I are trying to set up him up with as many different things as we can in life so that he has lots to choose from. I had a great upbringing from my dad but some things I wish I got to do like fixing things. We, as parents, all have lessons that we learned previously so we are trying to take what lessons we can and bring them forward. Today was one of the first of many hands-on lessons for the little man! I don't know if we can ever send him to formal school, though we don't want to in the least bit. He has too much fun doing this type of stuff that I think he would be bored to tears in a classroom of western-style school hahaha. That's not a bad problem, I think!

The brake job is half done, I figured I would split it up between a few days so that we can not spend all day doing it. He helped me fully for about an hour before he got bored and was playing in the sticks and trees lol.

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