Dad's animals

Animals designed by Jim Tomlinson (1926-2014)

Introduction:  

Sometimes we forget how quickly the world can turn upside down.  Having set up this blog as a medium for my short stories, I've written several of them over the past couple of months, intending to edit and publish them over the summer break.  Then, last week, my Dad died.  The last time I was with my Dad, in June of 2013, right after my sabbatical, I told him about my sabbatical blog, in which he had made a guest appearance.  'But who reads it?' he asked, a bit skeptical.  I explained how the internet allows you to search for information on any topic, and how sometimes, people searching for something I have written about on my blog, might arrive at my blog.  He was delighted with this idea, and asked me if I could publish the information about his animals on a blog.  As you can see in the picture above, these are wooden animals that he designed for children (age 4-5) to make with minimal supervision.  

He was delighted with the idea that people searching for children's arts and crafts projects would be able to find his instructions.   

Dad, June 2013

Happy to do as he asked, I took pictures, wrote up my report, and promised him that it would all go on my next blog.  But then I didn't do another blog, so I just put all the information about the animals away in the 'sort it out later' folder on my computer.  (Anyone who knows Dad will of course confirm that he would have approved wholeheartedly of this strategy).  When I created Saturday's Child earlier this year, I wasn't thinking about the animals, but rather about stories connected to jobs I've had over the past four decades.  However.  As fate would have it, Dad's animals are going to be the first post.  It's a perfect way to begin a blog about job-related stories, because Dad designed the animals as part of a volunteer job he had after he retired.  

How it all started:

In 1990, after my Dad retired from his 30+ year career at EMI, he went to live in Awre, Gloucestershire, with his new wife, Margaret.  Also retired, Margaret sometimes volunteered in the nursery in the village hall.  She helped the children with arts and crafts, and on one occasion when they were making wooden Christmas stockings out of balsa wood, they realized they had no way to drill holes.  So she brought the stockings home and asked Dad to drill the holes.  From then on, Dad was known in the village as a person who could 'do things.'  One day Margaret came home with a box of balsa wood and announced that the nursery manager had asked if Dad could use it to make toys with the children.  Dad always liked making toys for us when we were children (farmyards and dolls' cots come immediately to mind).  But, with one notable exception (my Japanese dolls house), he hadn't made toys with us.  Nevertheless, he decided to take up the challenge by designing wooden animals that the nursery children (4-5 years old) could assemble and paint with minimal supervision.  

The animals:  

The first animal was a rocking horse.  Dad drew up the design, cut up the wood with a fret saw, then brought it all to the nursery with some glue.  

There was a lot of trial and error.  The challenge, he explained, was to create designs that were simple enough for the children to put the pieces together themselves.  His guiding principle for each step of the process was that 'if I had to do it for them, it was too difficult.  The design was wrong.'  After the first couple of animals, he realized he had been aiming at '7 year olds instead of 4 year olds,' so he modified the design accordingly.  Another lesson he quickly learned was that because of the small size of the children's hands, tasks he had thought would be too difficult, too 'finicky', were actually quite easy for them.   

He drew the designs on cardboard, cut out the cardboard, placed the cut-outs on bolsa wood, drew around them, then cut the wood.  At first he used his fret saw, but later, once demand increased, he invested in an electric saw.  For each project, he went to the nursery once a week for three weeks.  

Week one:  Assembling the animals using glue.
Week two:  Painting the animals
Week three:  Finishing touches including eyes and ears and others, different for each animal, such as a tail for the pig and patches for the giraffe.  (The day they painted the patches on the giraffe was known as 'dotty day.')  

The giraffe and owl, he said, were the most successful from a design standpoint, being 'just the right level of difficulty.'  He talked about the giraffe's neck.  He hadn't wanted to sandpaper the wood down to make the neck rounded, so the children painted the patches (or 'blobs', as Dad called them) to go 'around the corner', thus giving a rounded effect.  

Dad and the children:  

I asked Dad what he found most rewarding in this work, and he answered 'watching the children's faces.'  He loved the expression of complete absorption as they concentrated on a task.  He described the legs of the elephant.  He had made the holes a bit too big to allow for manipulation of the leg positions so that the elephant would stand on all four legs.  He loved watching the children dedicate themselves to this task, maneuvering and adjusting, figuring out the 'trick' to getting it just right.  Watching them learn.  He loved the expression of happiness and satisfaction when they got it.  And he loved the expression of pride on the children's faces as they showed their parents the animals they had made themselves.  

Materials needed:

• Bolsa wood.
• Water-based paint and paintbrushes.
• Saw
• Spring loaded curtain rails (the thin white ones) for legs.  Cut with wire cutters.
• Wood Glue.
• Cardboard for templates
• Scissors.
• Drill.
• Model eyes (available in craft store).
• Dowels

Instructions for the elephant:






















The elephant came after lots of trial and error and was one of the ones that worked the best. 

The design worked, but it wasn’t too easy; the children still needed to apply focused concentration and some skill in order to make sure it stood on all four legs, thus giving them a sense of achievement (as above).  

Use the templates in the green picture to cut the bolsa wood and drill holes as shown.

Assemble the elephant as in the pink picture using glue. 

Note:  The holes are bigger than the dowel; they are more or less the right size but allow room to maneuver in order that the elephant stands squarely on all four legs, and maneuvering this requires the children to apply concentration (possibly first time in their life they’ve had to focus all their attention on an unusual, even slightly tricky, task). 

Glue the pieces on one at a time.  

SESSION ONE: Assembly with glue.

SESSION TWO:  Painting.

SESSION THREE: White detail paint added and eyes.

Here is a picture of Dad outside his house on our last day together.  June 2013

Goodbye, dear, sweet, Dad.  4/15/26 - 7/17/14

Jim Tomlinson, 1958 and 2013