Hooking them early –boatbuilding with my son’s preschool class

My son is in a coop preschool,so the parents rotate being in the classroom helping out. My wife had been doing it all Fall,but after her January session I decided I would take a turn. I also decided to bring a little of that Chine bLog style to the class. What better interest to ingrain in impressionable youngsters than boatbuilding?

I sketched out a fairly generic hull with LOA of about 10″and beam of 4″and grabbed a bunch of scrap wood from my shop. Wood and design in hand,I headed to my local Woodcraft (a fantastic resource for the shop-deprived) and milled the scrap wood into 16 boats and 16 sets of different shaped blocks. Being me,I also cut up dowels to make 16 8″masts and drilled a mast step in each boat.

In the class,I started with a quick intro to boats,shown below. Surprise surprise,no stinkin’Cigarette or tubby plastic thing made the cut! Thanks to the various sites I pilfered for this PPT.

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Then the kids got to sit with their hull,their set of blocks,and a tube of glue and make their own boat. They loved it. The room grew quiet with concentration as creative minds went to work. Check out the output –a fun,productive activity,I’d say.

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