It's taken quite a bit of experimentation, but I am nearly ready to enter this world of blogging. I am eager to post photos, but still waiting to recieve permission from admin and parents to do so.

As soon as I do, I can show the excitment of our exploration into woodworking. We kept things pretty open ended as to what to create. We did demonstrate a few possibilities such as a geo board and name plaques, but other than that our focus has been on skills not product. So far we have an airplane, 2 bird houses and one bird condo! The younger children are naming the tools with pictures and objects (found in language) and sanding wood (located in practical life). The tools that are not in the object basket are being stored on a peg board near the back door. It has really helped to set the standard of respect for the tools to have a lesson on classification and naming first, so when a 3 year old comes up waving the coping saw or hammer saying, "I need to use this!" I can say, "Great! Let's have a lesson on the tools to get you ready." I feel very safe about using the coping saw, as we invest so much into care of self, others, the environment, and safety. We did have one little guy try to pound holes in the compost bag with the hammer instead of hammering a nail into the tree stump. He was not making much progress with the nail, so perhaps he thought he might with the bag of dirt!
In preperation for bringing this aspect of life skills and creativity I found a blog Wisdom of the Hands which holds the spirit of following the child and putting them in contact with means to do for themselves.
The process for the children is:
classifying tools
design a "blue print"
select the wood
construct it to see if will work
sand the peices
saw
glue
drill
hammer
paint
Lessons on sawing, hammering, and drilling are necessary along the way. Some of the children are sanding, hammering, sawing, and drilling for the purpose of acquiring the skill and have no end game in mind. They are extremely excited about this new aspect of the environment! It has taken 9 years to bring this to life in our classroom. Up till this summer we had hammering on the stump, plumber's pipes for gross motor development and imagination, nuts & bolts, and locks & keys.
My favorite aspect of this is how much the children are taking initiative in problem solving and what they are teaching me along the way. I know very little about working with wood and basically raided my husband's tool boxes (with permission of course) to launch this. We had been trying to solve a sawing problem using clamps and different thicknesses of wood in relation to the thinkness of the tables. I tried a few ideas using a variey of clamps with no sucess. I left the child to address something else in the classroom. When I returned, 10 minutes later, he had solved the problem using the materials at hand! I am grateful for the model set down by Montessori in guiding children to develop real life skills in sequence of necessity, followed by removal of the teacher. My mantra is often "to cast a ray of light and move on" so that I remember to keep my lessons simple, clean, and short. It is their work, not mine.... I am merely the observer, the gather of interests, and facilitator between the child and the environment.
Hopefully I will have pic's up soon.