Learning to be an Evil Inventor I

Jacob took his first step yesterday towards being an inventor. The tools of the trade are important to learn. We began with a screwdriver.

Money isn't the root of all evil, but it can cause problems

Lucy shoved a bunch of big plastic coins from her piggy bank into a toy piano. This rendered the piano unusable. I was going to fix it during nap time but Jacob seemed interested in helping me so I promised him that I'd wait until he woke up and we'd do it together. While he was sleeping I got our screwdriver out and left it with the piano.

Jacob woke up, had his snack and we set to work. First I showed him all the screws underneath the piano. The job would be tricky since both flat head and phillips head screws were used. Luckily, our screwdriver has multiple heads so I could easily switch them out. First we worked on the phillips head screws. Jacob and I carefully turned the driver in the proper direction (I told him about "righty tighty, lefty loosy" but we haven't taught him left and right yet) and out came the screw. His excitement at using the screwdriver was palpable. Jacob put the screw on the table in a safe spot. After taking out the other two phillips head screws, we switched to the flat heads and got them out quickly.

We pried open the piano. I took out one coin and Jacob the other. He was very excited. I told him we'd have to put it back together. After snapping the bottom of the piano back on, I had him test the playability of the piano before we put the screws back in. It worked fine; he sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Then he gave me one of the flat head screws and we turned it in the other direction. Soon we were done with all the screws. Piano fixed.

Jacob was very proud of himself and I was proud too. Working together was great. I hope we have lots more projects in the future.