Athena brought in an amazing machine for the Nurseries to use this week. It’s a power packed, lever based nut cracker that her mother let us borrow for black walnuts.  

These kinds of hand powered mechanical devices are becoming so rare... from a simple can opener to hand cranked meat grinder.  Children love them for a reason. Simple tools and mechanical devices help with a child’s growing understanding of the physical and mechanical and even mathematical worlds. Play with the non-digital, old time, classic Etch A Sketch and you may begin to build a foundational understanding of the x and y axis and the slope of a line.