This morning we got a new firebasket – we need to get it ready for our big Pirate Adventure, so that the pirates have somewhere to cook their food – so we opened up the flat pack and set to work.

Fred very sensibly pointed out that “The most important thing is not to lose the screws!”  He had obviously built flat packs before!!!  We looked at the bits and counted them all.  “There’s a lot of bits!” said Cate.  Max was the special “nut mechanic”.  He had the job of putting on all the nuts onto the ends of the screws and tightening them up.  “If you come to my house, you can see I have ones at home.  Mine are yellow!”  Max was very good at putting the nuts on in the right direction.

Cate helped put on the handles. The very last nut was really, really difficult.  There was something wrong with the thread and we had real trouble getting it on to the screw.  “We could use the hammer!” said Fred – but this didn’t work. “We could try this!” said Max, taking an adjustable spanner from the tool kit. “And maybe this ..” said Cate , handing me an electric screw driver.  We all worked together and found that if we held it really tight with the adjustable spanner we could get it tighter.

This learning experience showed that we have some very able builders within the nursery – it has made me think that we could provide challenge with some large scale nuts and bolts and drilled pieces of wood to attach together.  Great for problem solving and motor skills.