Children today grow up in technically advanced environments. Children’s rooms equipped with electronic toys and device can be found everywhere. However, even the mechanical functioning of fairly simple toys, sports equipment or common utilities is often fairly complex, technologically challenging and hard to understand in terms of its construction and modes of operation, even for adults.

The paper presents results from a research project that investigates what kinds of approaches and understandings children have and which skills and problem solving strategies they apply to deal with usual and every day technical challenges of common equipment and utilities. Of interest is, on the one hand, to find out more about the technical prior assumptions and basic understanding primary school children possess. On the other hand, the project also investigates how children solve technical problems in practice by confronting them with hands-on activities taken from their everyday life. In this way, the project scrutinises how preparatory basic knowledge in terms of problem solving approaches and planning interplays with practical skills when performing hands-on activities.

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