Summer Woodworking Class
This summer, I was unfortunately limited in what I could do because of the pandemic. I had been thinking of what to do and I knew I wanted to teach something to someone. So, I had the idea to run a woodworking class for young kids.
I advertised my summer business on Facebook and was getting weekly customers who wanted their kids to have something to do over the summer. Now that I had a few groups a day, I needed to come up with 4 projects, one for each week of the month. Each project needed to involve woodworking and appeal to a variety of ages.
One of my ideas was for the kids to make a corn hole set. I had not realized that a simple corn-hole making activity would involve the amount of work that it took to finally put together. I first had to get the dimensions of a kids-size corn hole board and figure out how much it would cost to get each board for each kid in each group. I then had to decide how the board was going to stand. I wanted the legs to be able to swivel in for easy storage so I decided to use long bolts to attach the wooden legs. Then, for beanbags, I initially wanted to buy them in bulk, but I realized it would be less costly if I just made them myself. So I went to the fabric store and bought a few yards of fabric. I cut out 3×3 inch squares and used a sewing machine to sew 3 sides, put 1/3 cup of dry rice in the bag, and then sewed the remaining side.
Once I had all my materials, I started to make individual kits for each kid. Each kit had one board, two legs, two bolts, 4 nuts, 4 washers, 3 beanbags, a piece of sandpaper, and paintbrushes and paint to decorate.
I repeated this process with other projects such as an easel, a tic tac toe board, and a toolbox.
After completing a month of this, I realized how much I learned. I learned valuable skills in teaching, problem-solving, business development, working with kids, and communication through this process. It also was extremely rewarding to teach other people.
