bridges...

This morning the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades students finished book making, and helped make more pinwheels. The high school students worked on bridge building as you can see in the photos. A wide range of bridges are being built, from simple spans to more complicated arches and trusses. At the end of next week we will be ready to test the bridges for strength.

Early books on Educational Sloyd offer insight into why all children should be engaged in wood shop. The following is from T. C. Horsfall, J.P. and his introduction to John D. Suttcliffe's Hand-Craft, a text book for Slöjd.

The reason for desiring the introduction of manual training into Elementary Schools might have been expected to suggest itself to all persons who are acquainted with the conditions under which the mass of English people live; but experience gained in Sweden and other countries where the Sloyd system has been largely used, proves that there are also strong educational reasons for desiring that Sloyd shall be introduced into all English Elementary Schools as soon as possible. It has been found that this admirably graduated system of training not only fosters deftness of hand and correctness of eye, as it might be expected to do, but also has distinctly moral and intellectual effects, as it promotes patient attention, steady application, and interest in work to a very high degree."

"Its effect on many of the large class of children who, though not dullards, show lack of interest in, and deficiency in the power to understand, the subjects comprised in the ordinary school curriculum, has been most beneficial. In their Sloyd lessons many of these children have found themselves the equals, some more than the equals, of companions far their superiors at book-work, and have by this gained a confidence in their own ability which has often reacted on their power and their will to conquer their other lessons. Thus many children who, when they first began Sloyd, were distinctly below the average in intelligence, have become under its influence completely 'normal'."

"All persons who know how badly prepared are the majority of the children who now leave our Elementary Schools for gaining rapidly skill in the work by which they have to live, or for taking an intelligent interest in their own work or in the best handiwork of others, most strongly desire that the education authorities in this country will no longer delay the introduction of a system, the great usefulness of which has been so fully ascertained in other lands..."

Make, fix and create...