Construction Kids Comes to Heathcote

Whether you call it design thinking or woodshop, fifth graders at Heathcote learned to use tools, design and build at special workshops led by Construction Kids on Tuesday February 24. The school held three 90-minute sessions – one for each fifth grade class – where the kids learned how to use a hammer and nails and construction materials to design a project.

The workshops were led by Construction Kids, design thinkers from Brooklyn, who conduct sessions in schools, host parties and lead activities at their own facilities in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Kids experiment with materials and learn to safely use tools to plan, design, build and repair.

The workshops at Heathcote first focused on using hammers and nails and then moved onto the creation of marble runs.

Both boys and girls were banging away with the hammers and happy as could be. I heard one enthusiastic young lady say, "This is so fun!". Another thought she might be able to help out at home with a flood caused by frozen pipes and a table of girls agreed that girls are "strong and brave" and just as good with a hammer as the boys.

The activity was arranged by fifth grade teacher Christine Boyer who said that her class followed up the Construction Kids session by blogging about it online and including links to another design-thinking project they recently completed where they built Rube Goldberg projects.