Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Sunday School Carpenters

The Art workshop for the "Jesus as a Child" workshop in WorkshopCycles is a carpentry project. The project as it was originally conceived didn't have much carpentry involved. However, I had A Great Idea. I decided our children should make wooden prayer benches, and found free directions (that seem to no longer exist). Here is another site with directions on how to make the prayer benches.

As the time drew near, adults were beginning to get nervous about combining children and power tools, and about the ability of the children to get this project done in the alotted time. However, since Charlie has helped Shawn with carpentry projects since he was 2, and since Shawn was leading the workshop, I was confident things would be fine.

We pre-cut and routed the wood, so the first things the children did were to put the legs in the grooves and sand the pieces:


Next, Sly helped the children used a drill press to drill pilot holes for the 4 screws that hold the legs on:


Some children also tried using hand tools to make the pilot holes:


They then screwed in the 4 screws and their benches were complete:


The workshop went wonderfully!! I was able to be around for it, and the students were very engaged in the project. It was a delight to see.

I had intended for the children to leave the benches here at the church, as a donation of their time and talent to the worship in this place. However, I forgot to make that clear to my husband. So the children took their benches home. Today, I heard that one student is now having her dolls pray.

What could be better!?!

5 comments:

C said...

Helen, how awesome! What a great project! I bet the kids are very proud of what they made.

Cathy said...

This is really really cool. I want one.

momma helen said...

Cathy-- my husband and I have decided to sell these type benches to fund my sabbatical (in 4 years), so if you're serious, e-mail me!

Terri said...

Wow, great project! Maybe our kids will do this for Lent...hum...

Anonymous said...

Wonderful project. Rotation is a great way to teach isn't it? I hope that you are aware of the web site rotation.org - there are lots of free lessons there.