Category: Project Inspiration

Don’t Throw It Away! 7 Things To Make Out Of Your Christmas Tree In January

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There’s nothing quite like bringing a real Christmas tree into your home over the festive season. The shape, the smell, the needles stabbing you in the feet. Whether you went with Pine, Spruce of Fir, eventually January will arrive and it will be time to let it go. There will also be a load of other people wanting to get rid. Hello, free resources! There are lots of things that you can make and to be honest, the sky is the limit. This blog post contains 7 ideas to get you started and spark your creativity. Make them yourself and make them with your children and students. Here’s to a positive start to 2021!

Now is the time to send out the call to your community for trees after the festive season comes to an end. Depending on your situation, you might be able to offer collection. Otherwise just ask people to deliver their trees so that you can use them to make awesome stuff! Some will, others won’t but if you don’t ask, you won’t get!

Important Note: All of the things in this post are going to give you opportunities to use tools with students. Take the time to introduce them properly and have conversations that are going to help students keep themselves and others safe. If you haven’t used sheath knives yet, check out our Knife Basics page.

Wooden Spinners

Check out this post in our Project Inspiration Series on How to Make Wooden Spinners. Whether you use it to incorporate measurement skills or you just want to have a massive ‘Nature Beyblade’ competition, this project is a win.

Log Santas

One use that we’ve found for a log cut on an angle is these adorable log Santas which students made to sell at our Grade 3 Christmas Market. Sawing the trunk on an angle provides you with a lovely, free-standing shape that you can do lots with. You can burn patterns, paint designs or simply write messages of 2021 positivity.

Harry Potter Wands

“It’s Levi-O-sa, not Levio-SAR.” Channel your inner geek and make something that you can pretend you bought at Ollivanders with Hagrid. Again, make sure that you’ve been to check out our Knife Basics before getting stuck in.

Small World Settings

Create some trees in your small world setting. Where else is it ok to have elephants and dinosaurs hanging out in the same place? Alternatively, you might want to season your most recent concoction in the mud kitchen with a sprinkle of magical needles. Let your imagination go wild!

Noughts and Crosses

Also known as ‘Tic Tac Toe’ by our friends across the pond, this is a cute little project which involves a fair amount of sawing. You’ll also need a soldering iron to create the lines on the board and pieces. Alternatively, this could be done with pens and markers. We used bow saws to cut the game board from the trunk and hacksaws to cut the counters from the thicker branches.

Baubles and Gift Tags

Being able to say that next year’s tree decorations or take-home-crafts are going to be made out of last year’s Christmas tree is pretty cool. And once you cut the discs, you can do anything with them that you like. Paint them, brand them or simply leave them au naturel. The sky is the limit.

Key Rings

Get some practise in with your concave cuts, thumb pushes and stop cuts. Oh, and there’s some drilling too. Check out this post from out Projection Inspiration Series on How To Make Wooden Key Rings.

Other uses for left over Christmas Trees

  • Burn it (cue creosote discussion here)
  • Protect plants from frost with it
  • Mulch it
  • Recycle it
  • Donate it to a good cause (e.g. in some places, they are used to reinforce sand dunes against erosion from the sea!)

So there you have it, a little inspiration for some of the things that you can make instead of just throwing out your Christmas Tree. If you’ve got any other ideas, we’d love to hear about them!

Project Inspiration: How To Make Wooden Key Rings

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As our global pandemic continues, we are sending our best wishes and positive energy your way. We hope you are well and that your spirits are high. Something that might help is reading this article from the Centre for Disease Control which supports how important it is to keep doing what we do in these crazy times!

Now, on with the post. This project is great for developing knife skills beyond the pointy stick. By using stop cuts and concave cuts, it is an excellent next step for those students motivated to take their whittling skills to the next level. If you haven’t used knives with students before, head to our Knife Basics page. Make sure your knives are sharp and your wood is fresh, and let’s go!

A note on COVID19

We made this project near the end of our last school year. Only just back in school after our COVID19 lockdown, we were looking for hands on projects to balance the amount of time spent on screens during our Home Learning programme. Our system for tools was anything that had been used ended up on the “unhappy” side of the table where it was disinfected and moved to the “happy” side. Any tools on the “happy” side were fair game.

Step 1) Gather Materials

As with our post on How to Make Wooden Spinners, the wood for this can be anything that you have lying around. We used bits of hazel and also the thicker branches that we had leftover from our Christmas tree haul. Diameters of 1.5cm up to 2.5cm are good. Too thin and the project can crack during the drilling process. Too thick and your keyring can get a little bit too chunky to be fit for purpose. As always, the fresher your wood, the easier it will be to carve. Avoiding harder woods, such as oak, will also set your students up for carving success.

Step 2) Measure and Cut

Get those measuring sticks out. We went with 8cm in length. In actual fact, the measuring process is not really necessary, but any opportunity to get our students using their measuring skills in an authentic context is a win. “Measure twice, cut once” and then hacksaws at the ready. If your students haven’t had much sawing experience, put yourself in a position to assist or give them some time to practise.

Top sawing tips: Glove on the “helping hand” and maintain those space bubbles.

Step 3) Carve one end flat

This step involves using concave cuts to create a flat surface on one end of your stick using a sheath knife. Concave cuts, according to Richard Irvine in his awesome whittling book Forest Craft (affiliate link), requires changing the angle of the blade as it moves through the wood. We find it useful for our students to connect this action to that of accelerating on a motorbike (insert sound effects as appropriate).

Step 4) Drill the hole

Our hand drills have 5mm bits, but you can play around with different sizes that you have. A round file can be useful for making small holes bigger if you think you need to. Aim to get your hole as central as possible and be careful not drill too close to the top of your stick, as this may cause the project to crack.

Top drilling tips: Glove on the “helping hand” and find a table or surface to drill onto. Avoid pushing the drill towards you hand.

Step 5) Decorate

Once the hole is drilled, it’s time to decorate. Whether you want remove all of your bark or create patterns using stop cuts, the world is your oyster. A stop cut involves creating a line or cut which is perpendicular to the direction that you are carving. Do this by turning the stick 90 degrees then pushing and rolling it along the blade of the knife. When you rotate back and carve towards the line, your blade should stop at the line and give you a nice clean finish. This is the theory. It can take a bit of practise to get the stop cut deep enough and there will be times when the blade does not stop. When this happens with students, encourage them to incorporate the “mistake” and alter their design.

When we made this project, some students really took their time on the detail while others carved all of the bark off in minutes and then proceeded to make another keyring for their sibling, and then mother, father, grandma and cat.

Top tip: Drill holes before decorating. Sometimes, the stick can split during the drilling process and it’s pretty soul destroying if you’ve already decorated and then you need to start over!

Step 6) Add the ring

The final step is to thread your creation onto the metal ring. Depending on the dexterity and fine motor control of your students, you might need to assist with this. The minute you find a student who can do this independently, make them your expert and then pop the kettle on.

So there you have it, the third post in our Project Inspiration series. Stay safe, stay healthy and start creating.

Project Inspiration: How to Make Bamboo Panpipes

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Following our recent blog post on how to create wooden spinners, next up in our project inspiration series is bamboo panpipes. Opportunities for learning include safe tool use, measurement and fine motor skill development. This year, we created bamboo panpipes during our Grade 2 measurement unit. The measuring, re-measuring and sawing is a wonderfully authentic learning experience for measuring in centimetres.

Whether you’re using it as a way to practise measuring or as a challenge to play the perfect pentatonic scale, this project is great. The children also have something to take home at the end, which is a win in anybody’s book.

A Quick Note on Organisation

  • Sawing table & everything else table
  • Be clear about the process

As with everything on this blog, you are going to take ideas and adapt them to suit your own space, number of students and confidence levels. When taking on this project, remember to consider the following:

The Layout of your Space – Consider having an area for sawing and a separate space for everything else. This will help students to manage their space bubbles while using the hacksaws.

The Process – Be clear about the process you want students to go through. For example, only approach the sawing table when your measurement has been checked and only when there is an available saw. When you’ve cut your bamboo, move back to the work station for sanding and cleaning.

Be Prepared: Giving each student a 1.2m length of bamboo to work with can be hilarious but also potentially hazardous. When concentrating on measuring, they tend to lose awareness of the other end of their stick and other people end up getting hit or poked. Pre-cut your bamboo into more workable lengths.

Step 1: The Bamboo

As a rough guide, you’re looking for bamboo with a diameter of 1.5cm. Don’t get too hung up on finding the perfect size. Just be aware that the bigger the hole in the middle is, the more air you’ll need to make a good sound.

GEEK ZONE: Bamboo is a monocot which means, like grass, it grows from the bottom up. The sections and nodes show where new growth occurred and the internal diaphragms aid the the transportation of water and nutrients. What that means for us is that wherever you see a node, the tube is blocked. If you wanted to, you could use these natural blockages to help create your panpipes. However, to assist with cleaning, tuning and ease of construction, we suggest avoiding nodes where possible.

Step 2: Measure

“Measure twice, cut once” and, “You can’t put it back on”. With these pearls of wisdom from my carpenter brother in mind, we get students to measure twice before getting a friend to check their measurement too. [Insert a short ‘measuring in centimetres’ tutorial here if necessary]. Initially, we included a ‘check measurement with adult’ step before sawing. We started at 7cm because we found that anything less than that was difficult to get a sound out of.

Top tip: Because we want our pipes to be node-free, make sure that your students know their measured distance should not cross a node.

Step 3: Cut

It’s time to get the hacksaws out. Remember to have a glove on the hand that is holding the bamboo. Try to cut as straight as possible to make your life easier later on when glueing everything together. We find bench hooks really useful to aid the sawing process but they are not essential.

If your learners have little experience with using a hacksaw, getting a straight cut might be easier said than done. If this is the case, do a quick demonstration and then give them some time to practise.

Top Tip: Keep an eye on the condition of your hacksaw blades. They can get blunt fairly quickly and sometimes bent. Bent blades can make it impossible get a straight cut and can be frustrating for students. Have a pack of spare blades and change them out as necessary.

Step 4: Name

For the sake of your own sanity, do not miss this step. BEFORE THEY DO ANYTHING ELSE, students should write their name on each freshly cut piece of bamboo. As a general rule, we encourage students to be responsible and keep tabs on their own materials. As you can imagine, this is successful to varying degrees. Names help.

Step 5: Clean and Sand

Freshly cut bamboo might be a little sharp and can contain a surprising amount of fluffy material. Sanding the ends of your pipes to give them a nice smooth finish will make your bamboo much more agreeable on the lip.

The inside of your pipes should be as clean as possible. Depending on the diameter of your hole, you might be able to use a circular file. Otherwise, grab a tent peg and start poking. This cleaning process is a vital step. Any material left inside the tube will interfere with the vibration of the air stream, which is a fancy way of saying that your tube won’t make a good sound.

Students will probably try and test the pipes once they are clean. At this stage, it’s worth having the discussion about sealing one end with a finger to create a better sound.

Step 6: Repeat

If, like us, you are using this project as an opportunity for children to hone their skill of measuring in centimetres, then you might also like to specify the lengths. We used 7cm to start with and then did 2cm intervals up to 15cm. Repeat steps 2 through 5 as many times as you need.

Step 7: Glue

To attach our pipes together, we used a hot glue gun. This is not the most environmentally friendly choice as the glue is most definitely not made from nuts and berries. It was, however, quick and fairly simple. We are looking for an alternative sticking solution.

Step 8: Plug

You are aiming to seal off the end of each pipe so that the sound resonates beautifully when you blow across the top. In the first trial versions of our panpipes, we experimented with duct tape and white tack. Both methods worked fine but looked terrible. Enter beeswax. As well as having lots of health benefits, beeswax is malleable and fairly easy to work with. We used beeswax pellets which meant that students had to smush and mould a couple together to plug each hole. We completed this project in the middle of winter and needed to use the staff room microwave to help with softening up our beeswax pellets.

If you want to be clever with your hole plugging, then it is possible to tune your pipes. The more beeswax you stuff into the tube, the smaller the space inside becomes thus creating a higher note. This is great if you have the time and can be an interesting open-ended challenge for your big thinkers!

Step 9: Decorate

  • Fresh willow
  • Paracord & wrapped bamboo

How you finish your panpipes is up to you and will largely depend on the materials that you have available. At the time, we had some freshly cut willow which gave us a really nice natural finish. Some chose colourful paracord while others used batoning to split bamboo before wrapping it with sisal. The choice is yours.

So there you have it, bamboo panpipes. When it comes to playing the panpipes, it’s probably safe to say that your students won’t match your level of experience of blowing into beer bottles. So, just like the wooden spinners, encourage a little bit of experimentation and practise.

Outdoor Learning from a distance: What our eLearning looks like.

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As with most of the world, our school here in Germany has closed its doors and moved over to an eLearning platform. We are communicating through a variety of online methods to ensure that home learning can be accessed by all learners in our international community. Now two weeks in, we’re starting to really notice what is working well and would like to share  some of our celebrations.

Project-based Learning

Working at home will not, and should not, be an exact replica of the finely tuned day children experience at school. There are many other authentic, real world learning experiences that the children will be having at home too. Providing project-based learning experiences allows students to work through tasks at their own pace. The open-ended nature of this kind of learning promotes differentiation by outcome, as the students are able to extend their inquiry in many directions, as their home learning environment allows.

Daily Videos

Just like at school, each morning children are greeted by our beautiful, happy faces welcoming them to another day of home learning. Creating morning video messages is a fun and personal way to connect with students, giving them a window into your daily events. So whether it’s balcony planting, wormery checking or sharing fun facts on Fridays, give your students a positive start to the day by sharing snapshots of your home learning!

Give it some beans

The German government announced school closure on a Friday and stipulated that all schools must open Monday & Tuesday to allow parents to prepare. Cue teachers scrambling to get eLearning up and going. In this time, we were able to source enough paper cups and bean seeds to send home one cup and two beans with each home learning pack. Fast forward two weeks and we have the Grade 3 students busy tracking their growth with measurement and the Grade 2 students now have a great purpose to create a structure, as part of their current unit of inquiry.

Padlet

If you haven’t used Padlet yet, it’s time to take a look. It’s an easy to use website that allows guests to share a variety of media without a login. When posts appear, it organises them like post-it notes on a pin board. It is possible to like and comment on posts and we’re finding it a great way for students to stay connected by sharing their learning. Above and below are examples of the kinds of things students have been sharing.

Happening Now

With our current guidelines still allowing people to go outside, it’s been interesting trying to strike a balance between learning experiences that can happen inside and outside. Either way, practical has been the way forward for us. In Grade 2, as part of our structures unit, students have been drawing designs, building forts and experimenting with both pyramids and post and lintel construction techniques. In Grade 3, we’ve been measuring the perimeter of objects both inside and outside. The focus for next week is going to be on getting outside. We’re providing a range of choice for students to engage with, from bug hunts and mapping to bird watching and land art.

Working with our current central idea “Living things are suited to their habitat”, Grade 1 students have become researchers. They have been inquiring into the ways their chosen mini-beast thrives in its habitat. Though painting pictures, creating dioramas and going on mini-beast hunts in their garden, students and parents have become experts on the living things in their local environment.

So there you have it. This is what we’re up to right now in these unprecedented times. Let us know how you are keeping learning going in your community. Stay safe and stay healthy.