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Workshop at Noguchi Museum
Oct 05, 2012 13:57
ConstructionKids will be conducting a workshop for teachers at the Noguchi Museum on Thursday, November 1st in conjunction with the opening of the show Hammer, Chisel, Drill: Noguchi’s Studio Practice. Join us for a private tour of the show with the museum staff followed by a hands-on building workshop. A discussion and refreshments will follow. Read more about it here.
Greene Hill School at CK
Greene Hill School will be attending our workshop on Tuesdays for a semester-long program of hands-on making and learning. Each age worked on their own projects:
- The 4's, being new to the school, learned how to hammer in our workshop on Tuesday.
- The 5's, being experienced builders, of course, are confident of their skills and remembered how to safely use hammers and nails. They built small boats with sails and started sea trials in our large water tanks. We discussed what would propels boats forward and the kids took their boats back to Greene Hill with 2 different sails to study how sail size affects boat speed.
- The 6's will be working on an intensive bicycle study.
- Both the 6's and 7's refreshed their hammering skills before moving on to the use of nuts and bolts with wrenches. Then they learned about the properties and origin of plywood, fiberboard, and pine, as well as studying the simple mechanics of bolt and nut.
- The 8's got off to a flying start. They will be studying propulsion and potential energy. Each child was challenged to make an 8-inch dowel fly off the table, first using their finger to flick it, then using a rubberband. We then supplemented with other materials to launch the dowel, improving the distance with each modification.
- The 9's will be designing and making real benches for the school, a legacy project and gift to the school from the kids. For their first session, we had a broad discussion about the form and function of benches then created a variety of prototypes. The design was limited to 5 pieces of material. The finished models were wonderful for their variety; no two designs were alike. The 9's are already off to a terrific start, designing a real-world project that draws on science, math, human factors, art, and craftsmanship.
Art Students Visit Workshop
Oct 01, 2012 23:27 Filed in: Teaching | Woodworking
On September 19th, students from the Staten Island College of Art visited our workshop to study wood as a material for sculpture. Marianne Weil, Assistant Professor of Sculpture, brought students from her Intermediate Sculpture studio. After an introduction to the properties of wood, we discussed techniques for working with wood, including bending methods, shaping and carving, and fasteners. The students then selected tools of their choice and experimented with small projects.
NPR's Planet Money Visits ConstructionKids
Jess Jiang, a reporter from NPR’s Planet Money, visited our workshop Sunday while we were hosting two birthday parties. She was collecting audio for a fascinating story on the explosion in helium prices, which fill all our colorful party balloons. Read the article and listen to the podcast here.
Brooklyn Based Gives Our Fall Programs a Thumbs Up
Local-blog Brooklyn Based recommended our fall programs recently. We are one of the few after-school and summer programs which actually teaches real hands-on skills.
