Comment by thesystemis

one of the nicest ideas I got from Adam Savage is the idea of a hardware store expense account. His father, instead of giving him an allowance, would give him a certain amount of money he could spend every week at the hardware store.

An artist who is a hero of mine, Toshi Iwai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshio_Iwai) in his talks describes how his parents stopped buying toys for him when he turned 10. He was encouraged to design and build his own toys. When he talks about his art, he always starts by showing these great sketches and flipbooks he made as a ten year old.

anyway, I find this approach (expense account for building supplies, encouraging children to build their own toys) really quite inspiring and plan on trying to raise my children the same way when they are that age.