We started out with a craft session during wich we made hammers for the kids to hang on their walls.

The previous evening I had printed out images of a nice decorative hammer which I glued to card which was sourced from cereal packets. Using string, beads, spaghetti, rice, and other bits and pieces which we glued onto the printed hammers we slowly built up 3d versions of the hammer.

We then laid out a sheet of tin foil and covered one side in glue and laid a hammer face down onto the glue. Then we folded the excess foil over onto the back of the hammer. This required the foil to be cut in various places to prevent it ripping in the wrong place.

Turning the hammer back over a fairly stiff brush was used to tap the foil down over the items we had glued on allowing them to show in relief through the foil. At this point the hammers already looked great.

After allowing the glue to dry for a while the next step was to cover the hammer in a wash of watered down black paint to give and antiqued silver effect. This really allowed the detail on the hammers to stand out.

The kids enjoyed this project and I was pleased as I had no idea how it would work out, it was just an idea that came to me. It was also interesting to see the stuff that you could teach the kids whilst doing this kind of thing. As an example I added washing up liquid to the water I used to dilute the paint as this helps to break down the waters surface tension and help it cover the foil.

Later on I read the story of how Thor got his hammer. I asked the kids to tell me what they already knew about Thor and we had a good discussion about symbolism in the myths, prompted by some questions from Odin which really made me proud and he clearly understood the concept of symbolism.

We rounded off with recording a short video recording of Taran and Odin talking about making the hammers.