Chinese 6-Year-Olds Must Be Brilliant!

About a week ago Kevin had made one of his pilgrimages to Harbor Freight and brought home this little airplane model for Jack. (FYI If you don’t know Harbor Freight it’s like Wal*Mart for tools. Great for stuff like ear protection, gloves, files, tarps, but if you’re looking for something to last more than one or two uses skip HF and go to a more reputable dealer.) 

Please note the “Ages 6+” and “Easy to Assemble” claims both clearly written on the front of the box.

I was dubious from the beginning, partially because of my prejudices against Harbor Freight and  partially because of all the little toothpick looking pieces of Bass wood that seemed so easy to snap and would resulting in tears. It seemed to me like the box should say “age 6 and up, some adult assistance required”

After opening the box and looking at the ‘instructions’ I began to doubt that this was a good choice for six year olds at all! Kids in Taiwan must be engineering geniuses if a six year old can assemble this. These were the instructions:

It also came with a teeny tube of glue and these words of wisdom, conveniently written in six languages. (BTW I’m assuming it’s sandpaper that the second asterisk is inferring is enclosed, it wasn’t, so it’s probably okay they didn’t finish that sentence)

We didn’t exactly follow those instructions after seeing what we had to assemble. I had Jack punch out piece as we needed them so we would lose track of things or mix them up. Jack was able to build the wheels/axel and the propeller piece as well as the tail. The rest exceeded his abilities and really tested mine (mostly in the patience department) but we persevered. We ran out of the provided glue building the fuselage. and had to dig up some large binder clips to use as mini vices since the pieces running the length the fuselage had to be slightly curved than held in place until the glue dried. Rubber bands came in handy when the clips wouldn’t work. That was nothing compared to the toothpick like pieces used to brace the biplane wings. A lot of under-the-breath swearing and tongue biting went on for those ones….. The pieces had to be ever so carefully weighted down while being balanced so the whole wing didn’t slip to one side or the other and the braces wouldn’t pop out of place or fall over.

I have some guilt that I had to do the majority of the assembly, however we did get it done. I think I’m going to let him paint it if he wants to, he thinks it’s pretty cool except the propeller doesn’t spin.

Maybe I underestimate the abilities of my almost 6-year-old…could yours handle this?

Next time I think we’ll go with a beginner level snap-together model….who knows, maybe they even make tractor ones.