beginning sloyd

Today the 1st grade students at Clear Spring School made pencil sharpeners. It was a great introduction to the use of saws, planes, marking gauges, squares and sanding blocks. The project is the first one from Gustaf Larsson's Elementary Sloyd and Whittling. and a perfect way to begin building skills in woodworking. The pencil sharpeners will be useful when the kids go on their first overnight school camping trip tomorrow. The plans from Gustaf Larsson's book are shown below.

The word sloyd in Swedish means skilled or handy, so we stared today's lesson with a discussion of what "skill" means, and how we get it. One student offered, "by paying attention." That and a bit of practice and care and you're there.

This afternoon, the 2nd and 3rd grade students began working on friendship boxes with leather hinges. We use a special bench hook to hold the saw square to the stock so that the box parts can be more easily assembled into a finished box.