Encouraging imagination is important for kids’ mental growth, especially nowadays where information and entertainment are spoon-feed over screens. One of the fun ways to put our kids’ imagination into practice is through woodworking projects. It’s a balance between creativity and cognitive skills, plus kids are able to create something unique and personal.

Whether for home schooling or for group projects in school classrooms, these ideas will challenge kids to stretch their brains as they think about making something original using mostly wooden objects. Kids may also be encouraged to search for wooden objects that could possibly work for their woodworking projects ideas.

Train and Tracks

We know how young kids love to play with trains – and this one is super easy to make. All you need are three wooden boxes, a wooden spool, and six pasta wagon wheels. But before going ahead with the assembly, let your little ones have a little fun with paint and ask them to color the blocks.

Once the blocks are nice and dry, use wood glue to attach the pieces together. Glue on the wooden spool to be the train engines smokestack. For the tracks, popsicle sticks on a piece of cardboard would do the trick!

Personalized Boxes

Adult supervision may still be needed for some easy wood projects for kids, especially those that require power tools.

If your little one wants to create a box for storing crayons, marbles, or any other personal items, he may need your hand in building one.

The box can be any size he wants – wider, taller, smaller, bigger. The lid could be sliding too. Kids would need wood, a pencil, tape measure, sandpaper, hand drill and assorted bits, speed square, and a saw for cutting the wood into the right pieces. If you want it to be simpler, you can also use wood glue to attach the pieces together.

Play Tent

Kids absolutely love the idea of building forts in the backyard. Like many woodworking projects, although larger than the previous ones, this one is a breeze to create. Built in just 10 minutes or less, your kids will be playing with their toys or reading books under the tent in no time!

You’d need four long pieces of wood (about 42” each), a long dowel piece, fabric, and drill. Note that the drill bit should match the dowel size for a secure fit. All it takes is drilling a hole on each end of the wood, inserting the dowel, attaching the fabric, and the tent is complete!

Robot Buddy

It’s more like creating a friend than just a simple wooden toy. For this project, you’d need an assortment of wooden blocks, heavy-duty string, wood glue, drill, and a wood burning pen.

Before you drill in the holes, make sure it’s a perfect match for the string size. The string should fit snugly inside.

Drill one hole in the head block and one in each limb block. The body block needs two holes on the side and two holes on the bottom, one for each hand and foot. Once the holes are ready, fill them with glue and stick in the strings using a nail.

Assembly takes a few minutes as you have to let the glue dry as well. Don’t forget carving the eyes and mouth with the woodburning pen. After that, your kid will now enjoy the companion of his robot buddy.

We are happy to offer a video filtering tool at the top of our website, but what if your child or teen is searching YouTube from a regular browser or smart phone? Fortunately, parental controls are now available on YouTube using a Google account.

Even though YouTube contains questionable material regardless of filtering, there are ways to make it a little safer. For a better video search experience for kids, explore our safe video search resource.

In this article you will learn how to turn on Restricted Mode (formally called Safety Mode) and more importantly – how to lock it. This does not mean it will provide 100% safety when searching videos on YouTube, but it will help filter out the worst content.

You may also want to consider using a parental control app to block access to all bad areas of the internet, including YouTube.

How to Activate Parental Controls When Searching Directly on YouTube.com

In the past, you could only turn on safe search for Google’s regular search results to ensure safe browsing. After many requests from parents and educators, YouTube now has parental controls so you can implement YouTube Safe Search in your browser when searching from youtube.com.

To implement the Restricted Mode for YouTube, go to YouTube.com and scroll down to the bottom of the page….

You will see a reference to Restricted Mode: Off...

Click the drop down arrow and details about ‘restricted mode’ will appear…

Clicking On followed by the Save button will activate ‘Restricted Mode’ but will not lock it.

Locking YouTube Safe Search

As you will see, it’s very easy to turn safe search on and off. Therefore, you may want to lock it in order to ensure it is always activated for all family members.

To Lock the Parental Control for YouTube, you will need a Google account. To open a free Google account, go to google.com and click “Sign In” in the top right hand corner of their main website. You will then see the option to create a new account.

Now return to YouTube (while signed into your account) and scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Restricted Mode link.

After selecting the “On” button, you will see an option to Save. Then log out of your account.

Restricted Mode is now activated you can now log out of your account. Unlocking restricted mode on YouTube will require you to log into your account. This guarantees that no one else can deactivate the safety setting.

Important: If you have more than one browser on your computer, you will need to follow these steps for each browser. Below is a video that walks you through the process of implementing YouTube Parental Controls that were just explained.  For safe mobile solutions, try our safe search app.

Remember, locking YouTube will stop the worst content but not all videos that you personally may see as unfit for younger viewers.

Watch this Video for Step By Step Instructions to Lock YouTube Safe Search

Even with parental controls activated, many parents and educators find YouTube inappropriate for their kids. Our safe video tab on the top of our website offers strict filtering of videos from a variety of safe sources.

Learn more about how parents can limit internet access through internet filtering.

There was a time when bullying was something we all had to endure in school, on the bus, and hanging out with friends. It was always unpleasant. The next generation, our children, have an even worse type of bullying to deal with… and it’s so much more common than what we suffered!

About CyberBullying

Remember how frustrating it was in school when somebody was upset and reacted passive aggressively, usually by spreading a rumor? How the victim of a bully (maybe it was you, maybe it was one of your friends) would feel singled out, how hard it was to go to school and deal with the drama.

Your children deal with passive aggressive bullying all the time… because the internet brings out the passive aggressive in almost every young person. From shy kids to the straight forward, outspoken kid… cyberbullying can happen by accident. But as you remember about being the victim of a bully… the wounds never heal.

What’s even worse about cyberbullying is this. When a direct conflict among friends is resolved, you can forget and forgive the hurtful things that were said. However, you can never erase them from the internet.

With that in mind, it’s important to be very sensitive when talking about cyberbullying with your child. And yes, if your kid is using the internet than you do need to talk about this!

Teaching Your Child How To Not Be a CyberBully

As mentioned before, the internet brings out certain behaviors in young folk. Of course your child knows not to pick on somebody in person, but do they know not to rant and rave on social media when what they say could unintentionally hurt somebody else?

Watch for passive aggressive behaviors, and teach your children to face their problems (directly) rather than Facebooking them or through any type of social media.

If your child is 13 or younger, you should have their social media log in info, and don’t share the password with your child. This way, you can easily check in on them and you can also protect your child from being the victim of a “hacker” cyberbully by preventing anyone else from finding out how to log into their account.

Cyberbullying is even more common with older teenagers (age 14-18), especially when they have a smartphone that allows them to post on impulse. Teach them to think before they post, and make sure they understand how important it is to never post anything that could hurt somebody else… or could come back to haunt them.

What To Do If Your Child is the Victim of a CyberBully

Be the parent that a child can feel comfortable talking to if they are being harassed or directly attacked online. Be kind and understanding, and be sensitive to their needs. The rest is really up to you, as a parent.

If the harassment is severe enough, you can involve other authorities (the school or the police.) As you may remember, this could backfire on your child so it shouldn’t be your first choice. One needs to evaluate closely determine the immediate and long term effects of the bullying your child is enduring.  If the bullying has started over personal drama, discuss with your child whether or not they should confront the person in real life and come to a resolution. Do not “feed the trolls” or respond to cyberbullying online… bring it back to real world interaction.

To protect your child from becoming the victim of a cyberbully, encourage them to make friends with other children who are kind and respectful. Teach your children that friends who are always “surrounded by drama” can be dangerous… you never know when you’ll get sucked into it!

What can a child or teen do to empower themselves against a cyber bully? Have them read our article on CyberBullying: for Kids and Teens.