A kid in a restoration shop in sort of like a wild boar in a glass factory. All you can do is hold your breath and wait for the bill for damages. We follow the general rule of high-end paint shops and do not have kids around projects. However, this restricted ability to show off to children what we do in "real time" presents a challenge for our industry. How do we get the youth of today interested in this profession and the car collecting hobby?
We protect our customers cars to the fullest. On the other hand, want our son and other kids to understand the joys of automotive building and refinishing. They need to understand how rewarding the hands-on work can be. We simply ask that the kids use the care and restraint of an adult while doing so! Yeah. Right. This is not an easy task for 5 year old! Children Rowan's age learn best by touch or by interacting with what they are learning about.
So, how does someone in this industry introduce cars and the love of the automotive industry to a child? Relying on the vehicles we drive to the grocery store in will likely not generate much of an interest in working with cars, especially fixing them. Luckily, we have some other strategies. And since Rowan likes to have jobs when he's learning something, we used the Rowan approach and gave job titles for each area of expertise.
7 Strategies to Teach Kids About Cars
1) Photograher in Training:
The Nintendo DS has a surprisingly fun and high quality feature allowing kids as young as age 4 to take pictures, draw on their photos or edit them, and then view them all as a slide show. Rowan has a great time following me around taking pictures of the same cars I am documenting. We often compete for the best picture of each car.
A photography scavenger hunt allow kids to learn car parts as you ask them take a picture each part as you call out the name. If you know very little about cars, consider this a learning opportunity for you as well and use a diagram to check your work! Kids love seeing if their teacher was wrong. Some kids really enjoy using the chart to search for the parts. It's similar to learning map skills and presents a different type of challenge. If your child is learning to read you can provide a list of the parts based on their reading level. To make it more challenging, time them and give them a limited number of "helps". Rowan enjoys trying to beat his own time, and tries much harder at sounding things out or finding the part on the car when he knows he can only ask me for a hint 3 times.
Continue reading for more fun ideas...
