box making, day 5...

We finished our 5th day of box making, and all the students seemed pleased with their progress and complimentary, for what they'd learned and what they'd been presented.

Tomorrow I have a one day  class on interior architecture for small boxes. It is a class I only teach every other year, so  I am actually a bit more nervous about this class than I was about the full week long class. I hope I have enough information about the insides of boxes to make it worthwhile for my students who've stayed for an extra day.

By tomorrow afternoon, I will be on the road home, celebrating the completion of this year's box making at Marc Adams School.

I want to touch upon how we learn. Is there a difference between how children learn and how adults learn? The only difference I see is that children are forced to comply with the learning of specific things, and adults really prefer, and insist upon learning the things that directly interest them. We have this absurd fear that children will not learn the things that we think are important to us, unless we force them to learn through the things that we are required to teach. Can anyone else see the stupidity of that?

Left to their own devices, children and adults learn best through play. I meant to write down the principles of Educational Sloyd on the blackboard for my parting thought to my students. Perhaps a few will be reading this... Though I was too busy to remind them.

• Start with the interests of the child.
• Move from the known to the unknown.
• Move from the easy to the more difficult.
• Move from the simple to the complex.
• Move from the concrete to the abstract, remembering always to test what you've learned under concrete circumstances.

Make, fix and  create...