I had hoped to have a post after both the second and third "Express Yourself" days however day two ended up being absolute chaos. We had an additional 6 kids show up and we had to get them started from scratch and caught up with the rest of the kids. We were also down both our helpers but luckily Mr. Andres the Swiss French teacher showed up to keep the kids in line. One thing we didn't anticipate was the difficulty the kids would have hammering the nails. This was partly due to the folding tables we were using as a bench. Every hammer blow would cause the whole table to bounce. We had better luck on the floor or using the kids workbench that I had brought in.
By day three we were finally starting to figure out all the tricks including pre-drilling for the nails. We were using pine so it wasn't really necessary but it made it a lot easier for the kids to hammer. At one point I had three different drills going. One pre-drilling the nail holes. One pre-drilling the holes for the screws on the bottom and one driving the screws. (We installed the bottoms using screws to allow them to clean out the bird house between seasons.)
You'll notice I've covered the kids faces in the pictures. In the age of digital photography this is probably unnecessary but there are still guidelines about posting pictures taken in the school.
In the end we did manage to complete all the bird houses and I think the kids were quite satisfied with their accomplishments. Who knows, maybe we inspired some of them to take up woodworking as a career. Hopefully they do this again next year. I'm definitely signing up again.
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