9 benefits of wood shop...

Children rapidly lose creativity during the first three years of formal schooling. This fact has been heavily researched and is widely accepted. You can test it yourself through observing your own child's refrigerator art.

1. Woodworking in school can be designed to reinforce creativity in the use of materials.
2. Problem solving behaviors that are useful in engineering and scientific exploration are nurtured in wood shop.
3. The making of useful beauty to be shared by family and community puts the child in a positive and creative stance with regard to self and society.
4. Woodworking is a multi sensory experience, putting into play all of the Howard Gardner set of multiple intelligences in a single exercise and location. It thereby engages all learning styles.
5. Lessons learned through the hands doing real things are learned at a deeper level and to greater long-term effect.
6. An understanding of history and litereature are reinforced by the student having done real things.
7. The relevance of mathematics in the development of intellect is made clear in wood shop. 
8. Children love woodworking as a counterpoint to formal studies as it reintegrates body and mind. 
9. If we want all our children to thrive and our culture and economy to thrive, the arts, including wood shop are essential to education.

Yesterday I began making small maple chests of drawers for jewelry. The first step is to shape the angle on the sides, making the finished chest more interesting. A simple platform made of scrap plywood supports the stock as it passes through the planer. In order for this process to work, the stock must be long enough to be engaged safely between the infeed and outfeed rollers, and thick enough to not be bent by the downward force they apply to the wood.

Make, fix, create, and reshape education so that students learn by doing real things.