Cutting Tools and Young Makers

Kids of pretty much any age can use tools. Determining which age groups can use what tools (with what kind of supervision) is the trick. When do you trust someone to use power tools? When do you trust a student to cut without supervision? In this post I will talk about cutting tools used in…

Summer Making (Part 2) – Woodworking & Installations!

Summer making in the Creativity Lab was wildly successful.  It lasted 5 weeks and taught more lessons than can be contained in one digestible blog post so here are a few bites-sized morsels: The impact of concentrated making over time on students is visible.  The results include increased confidence, creativity, and resourcefulness. Talking about what…

Shaping, Cutting, Connecting for Kids

What do words like woodshop and woodwork bring to mind?  For me, it’s always been the hand and power tools one uses that I think of most easily.   For kids in some of my afterschool classes, that’s been pretty much the same case.  When I asked Kindergartners and 1st and 2nd graders what words came…