Shop Class

Every weekday Ben and Jonny have a "shop class" with me (Mike) for about an hour. Its a break time for me from my computer related work, and a good time for them to get some fresh air. Also, this is the time for their primary teacher (mom) to work with Brandon and Emily on grammar and writing. Normally during this time, either I help them with little projects at their workbench in the garage, or they help me on one of my projects.

Since I returned from Mexico, the focus has been mostly on my projects around the farm. In January, Mindy and I put together a list of all the various things that needed to be done by spring and tried to prioritize it by how soon they needed to be done. The top items on the list were related to our first mama goat having her kid(s) around March 15th. When we built the new pole barn last fall, I designated an area to be the "milk room", we poured the concrete and framed walls for it last fall, and now we are plugging away at getting the rest completed.

In light of that, during the last few weeks, my shop class has had a wide variety of courses offered:

• Electrical 101 - pulling wires, wiring outlet boxes, switches, and lights.
• Insulation 101 - cutting and fitting friction fit fiberglass bats.
• Carpentry 101 - cutting and screwing OSB sheeting to walls and ceiling.
• Advanced Carpentry - installing a prehung door (I consider this "advanced", because as simple as it should be, I've not gotten very not good at this yet).
• Painting 101 - priming and painting with brushes and rollers (Ben's favorite class, he loves painting).

On weekends, often times we have all day classes with more intense learning experiences. Usually the teacher's assistant (Brandon) gets involved and we gets lots more done than we can with the short time slots available during the week.

Below are a few pictures from us doing the insulation work. Lest you think that dad is the only one getting any projects done, I included a picture of the boys applying varnish to some "treasure boxes" they built.