The Wisdom of the Hands Program at Clear Spring School was established to prove the usefulness and relevance of woodworking as a tool for general education. I want to spend just a minute to describe how projects are designed to be relevant at the various grade levels.

The guiding principles of project design are drawn directly from educational sloyd. The first is that the project should be useful to the child or his or her family. In addition to this, we use woodworking as a tool to integrate learning activities, so we design projects to be directly relevant to whatever the students are currently investigating in their classrooms.

The second principle is that each lesson should build incrementally on the skills acquired in prior lessons. We attempt to adhere to this principle through a gradual introduction of various tools and by gradually increasing the complexity of the projects.

Fortunately, all this planning doesn't fall on my shoulders. My fellow teachers at Clear Spring School are a whirlwind of creativity. They have lots of ideas, and because they as so closely involved in planning wood shop activities, they rarely miss a class. It is too much fun, and they work with me to assist the students while making each project for themselves. Now that we have several years experience in the wood shop, the most successful lessons can be repeated, making planning and preparation easier. The teachers all have favorites they hope to do again.

We hope that other schools will find our model useful. While Clear Spring School is very special, perhaps unique, there are teachers all over th US (and the world) in schools both public and private who know that their children need their lessons to be brought to greater meaning through the deep engagement that hands-on learning brings.