BUILDER BOARDS HIT THE ROAD
Five Projects to Help Kids Learn the Craft of Nailing
Looking back at the first year I taught woodworking two mistakes were making projects too difficult and assuming kids could use tools. Wrong. Most kids had never picked up a tool, and the ones who had really didn’t know how to use them. Nailing is a perfect example.
It’s not much, but it’s a NUF!
When my cousin Carl’s daughter was little he designed a 30 pound boat built from one sheet of 10 foot plywood and two 10 foot fir 1 X 4s. It was a clever design meant to get kids out on the water under their own power. I built two of these boats, one for each...
A Two Year Old Plays with Builder Boards
When my grandson Lucas, was two years old he wanted to go out to my shop. It seemed to me like there wasn’t much for him to do out there but I took him anyway. The last time I’d been in the shop I had been working on a set of Builder Boards so there was a...
More Hand carved Skateboards
More skateboards carved by my brother. Here is a mockingbird. They are cruisers not boards for tricks. The wings fold in for riding. This is back side of a guitar skateboard. The Wheels in the center unclamp and the guitar plays. Doug says it’s...Kids at Work, three short videos
Kids at work
Some Other Things I Built
I had never built a log building before, let alone with eighth graders, but my supervisor said, no problem. He had a design and we worked out details each morning before the kids got there. No one was more surprised than I it worked so well.
Chemistry 236, A College Turning Point
The Prof would go over each problem as many times as necessary, without making you feel like an idiot.
Delivering Food has become a series of Milagros Pequeños (Small Miracles)
On Wednesdays we do a run together for Miracle Food Network……Slowly we learned the children’s names, Mariela, Sofia, Flora, Gabbi, Iris, Alan, Karen, Carlos, Diego, Leslie, Juana, Rodrigo, Tristian, Reina. And they began to come to the door when we knocked.
Teachable Moments by Candy Meacham
“At night, in bed, sometimes I think about stealing money from rich people to give to poor people.” Our 6 year old grandson.
I later learned they were reading Robin Hood in kindergarten. Liam was pondering a local application.
Kids: Take It Apart
This is an electricity board made from parts taken from a VCR and a tape deck. It is powered by and electric train transformer. It got a lot of kids interested in electricity.
Go Carts Verses the Science Olympiad or Third Grade Engineering
When I was in the third grade, my sister and I and a couple neighborhood kids designed “go carts”.
Woodshop for Kids: Table of Contents
Below is the Table of contents from Woodshop for Kids
Four Speeds in Reverse
To save money, and as an antidote to book work, my college buddy Joe and I used to work on our VW’s together. VW Repair for the Complete Idiot was our bible and if it failed us Joe, who didn’t like big business capitalists, would consult VW of America and do the opposite of what they recommended.