Home Depot Kids

On the first Saturday morning of every month Home Depot runs a workshop for kids. They have little bagged kits ready to go and tables set up with tools and paint, the stuff needed for the project. Basically they're encouraging kids and their parents to come to the store and build something with wood and nails and more. (Plus buy stuff, probably.) I'll say these are usually pretty simple but can take a bit of finesse sometimes. The workshops have grown from something we tried to attend to something we do every month, though not always in store.

The first few times we got a kit were at the beginning of the month, I'd just be shopping with the boys and an employee would offer them to us to take with us. I kinda internally flagged the workshops, for which there was always signage, but it was a while before we came in for one. Our eldest very much liked building things from the start and would ask if we could get another project with regularity, but the extras seemed to dry up. Now I'm understanding why.

Low tables, with supplies, you sit on buckets. Apologies to the randos I captured here.

Even since we've started to go to Home Depot Kids, the past six months or so, it's gotten ridiculously busy. There's frequently a line to get started, there always seems to be families brand new to the experience, and it can be a challenge to find a spot to sit and work. They're certainly aware of this and our store keep adding tables, or opening up before 9am, and yet they always seem to be close to full. We usually get there in the first of the three hours too. I've heard they in fact will run out of kits before it ends. People like free activities and teaching their kids practical skills! It's great to see.

As I hinted at before, sometimes we just grab the bags and bring them home. We have hammers and screwdrivers and paintbrushes and paint all here. I'll lay out some cardboard on our island and off we go. It's not quite the same experience, it's much quieter, but I like not feeling rushed. We also have more space and a better ability to keep paint off our clothes. And, if it makes sense, we can do some of the painting before assembly, allowing everything to dry in the interim. It comes out a lot neater that way. You just aren't going to sit and wait for paint to dry in store.

The projects are frequently themed for the month or season. This month, March, was a little basketball game where you flip a ball and try and make it through the hoop. There's a baseball one this summer sometime. October, I remember, will be a haunted house. In the past we've done a paper football game, with uprights, some vehicles like a blimp and a fire truck (for which the local fire station showed up!) and perhaps the coolest one, a little two sided marker board. Click here for the 2025 schedule. Whoever is running these at Home Depot is doing a great job with ideas and execution.

My favorite aspect of this is simple, the kids are learning some skills and having a good time doing it. It's real fun to see our little ones grow in confidence and ability with, say, swinging a hammer or using a screwdriver with pressure. Yes, in the end there's more junk floating around our house for a while, but in this case I think it's well worth it.

The kids get these adorable aprons, though they're pretty stiff.

If you have young kids and this sounds fun to you, I highly recommend checking the workshops out. Get them an apron and start collecting pins. It may even become a recurring calendar event like it has for me.