rules for safe use...

Yesterday my upper elementary school students and I finished a seesaw they had asked to make me to help them make. Upon completion, they devised a set of rules for its safe use, submitted them to the head of school for approval, and will this morning present the new seesaw to the rest of the school.

It is a rickety, make do contraption, very much like those made by children nearly a hundred years ago.

A lovely book is offered free on Google Play, a Catalog of Play Equipment by Jean Lee Hunt, 1918. This book would send an OSHA inspector into conniption fits.

Out of door furnishings should be of a kind to encourage creative play as well as to give exercise. Playground apparatus, therefore, in addition to providing for big muscle development should combine the following requisites: Intrinsic value as a toy or plaything.

"The play of children on it and with it must be spontaneous."

Adaptability to different kinds of play and exercise. "It must appeal to the imagination of the child so strongly that new forms of use must be constantly found by the child himself in using it."

Adaptability to individual or group use.

It should lend itself to solitary play or to use by several players at once. –Jean Lee Hunt, 1918

In my shop I am in the process of making a cherry tool box that began as a test of a Woodhaven Portable Box Joint Jig. I will sand the insides of the tool box today and begin assembly. The jig worked great, and will be the subject of a review I'll write for Fine Woodworking Magazine.

Make, fix, and create. Insure that others have the same opportunities.