Community Watch: Build a Bench this Memorial Day Weekend!

Are you in the Houston area?  Ever wanted to get started woodworking?  Maybe you just enjoy benches as much as I do? Join me for the Wood Workshop at TX/RX Labs on Sat. & Sun. May 25th & 26th (5/25 & 5/26) from 9am-5pm.  The Finished Bench I will be walking you through how to buildContinue reading “Community Watch: Build a Bench this Memorial Day Weekend!”

This Week in the Classroom: Try Squares

My new “little” project obsession:  try squares.  These guys mark boards square.   That’s it.  All they do.  The try, not tri, comes from the act of “trying” an angle to see if it’s square, not three, or tri. This slideshow punctuated by a few of my favorite song titles, puns and lyrics in noContinue reading “This Week in the Classroom: Try Squares”

Check Out the Shutter Table Project on Recyclart.org

Recyclart.org is a site dedicating to showing off recycled and salvaged projects from readers around the world.  If you’ve followed WodoshopCowboy for a while, you know I make the most of the Houston ReUse Warehouse’s offerings.  Here’s another shot at how my boys and I used louvered shutters and fence posts to create some pretty sweet littleContinue reading “Check Out the Shutter Table Project on Recyclart.org”

This Week in the Classroom: Swingin’ Chalkboard Signs

Here’s a few shots of a project build I did a few months ago.  The challenge was to build a recycling container from completely recycled materials.  I picked up some nice crepe myrtle branches and immediately saw a V shaped stand with a small basket to collect recyclable goods. To bad we never did finishContinue reading “This Week in the Classroom: Swingin’ Chalkboard Signs”

This Week in the Classroom: The Conversation Bench

Students with autism, people with neurological disorders and people with two eyes and ears and a brain often need a place to talk.  For my students with autism, the act of conversation can be harrowing, heartwrenching and terrifying.  On a good day.  My students often must master sitting in one place, labeling the world withContinue reading “This Week in the Classroom: The Conversation Bench”

This Week in the Classroom: Boomerangs and Chalkboard Slates

Two projects really took off this summer – chalkboard slates and boomerangs.  The boomerangs, of course, took off a little bit more. Back in the fall I built a bike barn.  It’s more of a third-world shanty, but it housed the bikes and kept them sort of organized.  Either way, I picked up a largeContinue reading “This Week in the Classroom: Boomerangs and Chalkboard Slates”

This Week in the Classroom: Up-Cycled Shutter Coffee Table

A few shots of the shutter table project.  My students & I created these (there were four completed tables) tables using up-cycled window shutters & salvaged fence posts.  Finished with spar urethane.  Pocket hole joinery throughout.

Making A Makerspace: Top 10 Tools in a Maker’s Classroom (2012)

This year was a big year in the STEaMworks (STEM focus, art driven, work/project centered: the STEaMworks), my self-styled Maker classroom.  We (and the Math/Sci Team) built a lot of projects: rockets, rocket cars, derby cars, catapults, simple robots, box-making, bench-making, bridge-building, sail-testing, music making, spirographs, pendulums, 3D prototyping, CAD models, Arduino projects, Alice computerContinue reading “Making A Makerspace: Top 10 Tools in a Maker’s Classroom (2012)”

This Week in the Classroom: 2×4 Xylophone

I ended the year with an exploration of music.  I used xylophones, pendulums and windchimes to explore frequency, wavelenght, pitch, volume, etc.  I probably should have found a way to incorporate physical waves, but a trip to the beach was out of the question and I met disaster in my attempts at building a waveContinue reading “This Week in the Classroom: 2×4 Xylophone”

This Week In the Classroom: Pendulum Art (Swinging From the Rafters)

A quick video of our last major math project in my co-taught Math/Sci course.  I will take no credit, Ms. J took the project out of my clumsy claws and completely rocked it! We nicknamed this the spirograph project and you can tell from the wikipedia link that we are WRONG!  It should probably be describedContinue reading “This Week In the Classroom: Pendulum Art (Swinging From the Rafters)”