Building a wooden toucan — and confidence — in a Cedar Ridge Discovery Group

Just beyond the doorway of the usually quiet Cedar Ridge Media Center, the rhythmic tapping of hammers drifted from the Maker’s Space. Inside, about 20 students from the kindergarten and second-grade Builders’ Discovery Groups were each crafting their own wooden projects. Discovery Groups, in which elementary students gather weekly to learn about interest areas of their choice, are an opportunity for even the youngest Eagles to find out more about what they like doing and exploring. That day was extra special: not only were new tools involved, but special visitors had also come to help them build! A member of The Home Depot’s Kids Workshops team stood before the students. “I went to Home Depot before!” exclaimed one Eagle. To widespread oohs and aahs, the instructor brought out a dangling wooden toucan mobile. He showed how it moved. “Can you bring it home?” one student asked. The instructor smiled. “You can bring it home, because you will be making your own toucan today!”

The kindergartners and second graders had worked with many other types of materials before, building things like puzzles out of popsicle sticks. But this was an exciting new project. It explored challenges like fine dexterity, following written and verbal instructions and, of course, patience, since students were asked to wait for the whole class to be done with a step before moving onto the next one. Second grader Evelina Haapapuro took a break from gently hammering a few small nails into structural wooden blocks. “I like to create things,” she said. She’d built robots at home with her family, and last year, she had also been in a building-related Discovery Group.  Across the table from Evelina, kindergartner Elise Larson was working on her toucan. It was her first time using a hammer, and teachers, parent volunteers and the Home Depot staff helped her and other students use the tool safely. “It’s fun to build stuff!” Elise smiled. She also wanted to build robots someday, just like Evelina.

Amid the sea of orange aprons —  before they got started, each student put on a bright apron, just like the Home Depot workers — second grader Khalid Abdullahi was intently building his toucan. “I want to keep building stuff like this,” he said, “because I want to be an engineer when I grow up.” He liked constructing things with magnetic tiles and thought building was fun. Though his dream was to build houses, not birds, the Discovery Group offered Khalid a hands-on experience to uncover more of his own interests and build his confidence. Being an engineer was entirely within his grasp.

Working as an engineer was a long way off for the Cedar Ridge students in the room that day, but for now, exploring different materials and asking questions such as, “How do we get marbles to roll even faster down the runway we constructed?” made the’ Discovery Group a rich experience. “Especially for kindergartners,” said Cedar Ridge intervention teacher Katie Tompkins, “we want them to have some creativity.” The creative, hands-on experience building a toucan fueled enthusiasm for the act of discovery itself, even if students decided not to become engineers down the road.

Eagles didn’t have enough time to finish their toucans in class, so they brought the materials and instructions home. And right along with those materials, they brought a new experience, a new excitement and a new discovery about building things — and about themselves.