practicing with tools

We're all really excited over here at Brightworks because the first day of the Expression phase has come! The kids are so ready to break out the screws and wood and start building their city and working on their very first projects for what we know will be a huge portfolio of work someday. But we start small, with one project at a time: it's all in the doing.Anthony and Camille worked all day Sunday to lay down the foundation for Kid City in the corner of the school.When the Brightworks students arrived Monday morning, it was all tools, all the time. Everyone grabbed eye and ear protection and traveled between three different stations to practice using the tools that will soon become their extra limbs during Expression and beyond.Inside, they drilled holes and drove screws with Chane and Sean.With Mackenzie, they sawed pieces of scrap lumber with handsaws.Outside on the sidewalk, they practiced hammering nails with Josh. While nails aren't the joiner of choice at Brightworks - they're too hard to remove - it was an excellent exercise. We calculated that the 20 Brightworks kids used more screws in a matter of hours than 150 kids used at Maker Faire earlier this year.More drilling...More sawing...More hammering.Every day the space that Brightworks lives in changes - some days more dramatically, others more subtly. It's always exciting to see what new piece of artwork will go up on the walls, how the room dividers will be arranged, what kind of lunch table we'll be sitting at... now we're excited to see the changes in the buildings that go up and the changes in how our students treat tools and start to learn their secrets as they discover their abilities to build big!Remember to check out more photos on Flickr!