The Guide to Woodworking with Kids: Craft Projects to Develop the Lifelong Skills of Young Makers by Doug Stowe

Introduce children to the craft of woodworking and watch their executive function skills thrive.

The Guide to Woodworking with Kids is a culmination of craftsman Doug Stowe's four-decade career in woodworking and nearly twenty years of working with students K-12 in his Wisdom of the Hands woodworking class at the Clear Spring School in his hometown of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This comprehensive guide offers step by step instruction for teachers, parents and grandparents to offer safe woodworking opportunities to their students and kiddos as a way of developing a wide range of valuable life-skills. Based in part on the philosophies of Froebel's Kindergarten and Educational Sloyd, this book illustrates the importance of doing real, hands-on activities in school and at home that enable students to:

• Think things through for themselves
• Develop skill, originality and inventiveness
• Explore their own self-interests
• Plan, organize and execute meaningful work
• Prepare to profitably employ leisure time
• Be handy and resourceful
• Develop both character and intellect
• Create useful beauty to benefit family, community and self

   

  The Guide to Woodworking with Kids is more than a woodworking book, it's gives parents, grandparents and teachers the confidence, encouragement, and the insight needed to safely engage children in life-enhancing creative arts.

• Studies prove that children engaged in a hands-on craft develop, among other key skills, confidence, problem solving, and independent thinking.
  
• Dovetails with rapidly the growing trend of increasing a child's hands-on time while decreasing time with video games, tablets, and phones.
  
• Woodworking, due to the many facets of project building, teaches grit and patience.
  
• The author, an expert woodworker with a dozen books in print, has been teaching children the craft of woodworking for two decades.
  
• As it grows, the Maker Movement is trending among families and schools.

• Woodworking enthusiasts
• Woodworking and craft instructors
• Craft-minded parents and grandparents
• Homeschooling Instructors

"Children love the feeling of accomplishment and pride that comes with building something from scratch. [This book] is the perfect source for teaching the skills required to do so. Inside you'll find step-by-step instruction that teachers, parents, and grandparents can use to share safe woodworking opportunities with their students and children as a way of developing a wide range of valuable lifeskills."--Page 4 of cover.

Doug Stowe began his woodworking career in 1976 and was reminded of the importance of hands-on learning by teaching his own daughter in the wood shop. In 2001 he launched the Wisdom of the Hands Program at the Clear Spring School to prove the value of hands-on learning in a school wood shop. He is the author of 13 other woodworking books, over 100 articles in woodworking magazines and educational journals, and publishes a blog dedicated to promoting the value of hands-on learning, Wisdomofhands.blogspot.com. The son of a kindergarten teacher, Stowe has become a respected authority on learning for all ages. In addition to teaching at the Clear Spring School, Stowe teaches adults the fine art of woodworking at schools and clubs throughout the United States.

Blue Hills Press

Pub Date: May 26, 2020

0.5" H x 9.9" L x 7.9" W

168 pages

paperback