Students teaching students: Gilford High woodworking class designs toys with 4th graders in mind

GILFORD — There’s one level of understanding necessary to perform a task, and another level needed to teach someone else how to do it. That’s what some Gilford High School students are learning in a new pilot program in which they designed wooden toys, then showed elementary students how to make them.

The program came about when Gilford Elementary School art teacher Kayla Houston met first-year GHS material design teacher Anthony Eldridge earlier this year. Houston recalled how the district she attended as a child in Pennsylvania had a tradition of partnering high school shop students with younger learners in “something like a toy workshop,” and Eldridge was all ears.

The two of them came up with a plan for students learning basic woodworking to design toys, and to produce the components necessary to build them. But that was just the first part.

“What Anthony wanted them to do was for them to also teach them how to build them,” Houston said. “The kids will learn from the high schoolers.”

The project came to fruition this month, with a group of 12 high schoolers visiting Houston’s art room to teach 16 fourth graders, each day for four days, how to build the toys they designed. The younger students then used their own design skills to come up with a paint scheme for the toys.

Joel Wernig, a ninth grader, said he was enjoying the class, which has a lot of his friends in it, and because he was learning “to use tools in a way we didn’t before.” He designed a truck for elementary schoolers to build.

“I wanted to make something that most kids would like. I figured a truck is pretty universal,” Wernig said.

Matthew Carsen, also a ninth grader, said the class has been a good experience. “We started up with just an idea. It’s a new experience for me, it’s nice working with new tools, learning how to build stuff.”

Carsen designed a rabbit with wheels instead of legs.

“It’s pretty cool, you get to see your project pay off,” Carsen said. “You can help people in your community by building things, helping them have a better day.”

Eleventh grader Joseph Huppi said it was an interesting challenge to come up with a toy their younger counterparts would appreciate, but wasn’t too complicated for them to build.

“I remembered I had a toy frog with wheels, on a string, that I used to pull along,” Huppi said, and decided to recreate that, but with a duck because it was an easier shape to cut from wood.

Asa Shockley, fourth grader, was carefully painting eyes and a bill on his duck after building it on Thursday morning. He said he had made a wooden toy before — a fire truck — and said those types of toys are different from those that come already complete out of the box.

“It’s different, you’re making it from scratch, not buying it,” Shockley said. “Both you can use your imagination. Probably the wood one’s going to stay much longer, the plastic one, that’s going to break.”

“I like that you get to paint it,” added Aubrey Armiento, saying she thought Carsen did a “good job” designing the toy.

Fourth grader Avery Faenza said “it was cool to build toys,” and added she had a special plan for the helicopter she had given a purple and blue paint scheme. “I’m going to give it to my mom” who works as a pediatric nurse, “to help other people calm down.”

Eldridge said the material design class is a “hands-on” approach, and this project asks students to become proficient with basic woodworking tools and principles. Because each student’s design was going to be built by several different fourth graders, they had to design and build five kits each.

“It’s a light into, 'Can I make this thing, and can I repeat this thing?' They not only get a feel for woodworking, also a little bit of manufacturing,” Eldridge said.

Houston said the project’s results were encouraging.

“This is our first time trying this out, it could expand,” Houston said. “We will have to see how it expands.”