homeschool class 2

Today I held my second home school woodworking class in a 4 week series of once a week classes. The students are working on toy trains based on a model wooden locomotive I had available as an example. Each student is working out their own ideas, building upon what was shown to them.

One student also made tops, another button toy, and s pinning Froebel cylinder and base. Another student also made an airplane.

I was out of school yesterday due to a cold, and my lower elementary school students were excited to see me back at school. I'll make up their missed class time tomorrow. I know that other teachers may also find joy in their relationship with students. To walk into a classroom of first graders and to be greeted with unbridled joy is an amazing thing.

One of the great things about this homeschool class is that it fits with the philosophy expressed by Dr. Waldemar Goetze in Leipsig, 1883.

"We must be on our guard not to confound the interest which grownup people take in these things with that of children. Experience shows that boys work with the same pleasure at objects taken from school life as they do at those for home use. The point is to avoid setting work which they cannot comprehend, and to enter the circle of their ideas. The pleasure of seeing misconceptions born of word teaching cleared up by the contemplation of real things and by personal experience, and the happiness of being able to follow instruction with more intelligent understanding, are as great as the satisfaction of making objects for daily use."

Make, fix and create...