The Lancaster High School Construction Academy is continuing a long tradition of building large handmade wooden rocking toys and donating them to children in the Lancaster community. LHS Industrial Technology teacher Andy Phillips said that the Construction Academy students enjoy making the toys for almost twenty years.
“We started the toys for tots rocking toy project back in 2005 when I was teaching Woods Manufacturing classes and have been trying to do it every year since. We first started building these for the Women’s shelter called the Lighthouse to help those families in need. We would always take any extra rockers to Maywood Mission which is a non-profit organization here in town,” said Phillips.
The students working on the project will earn their community service seal that applies to their graduation requirements.
“Students must have a strong understanding of how to read a basic schematic drawing, woodworking knowledge and how to apply those techniques with various different tools and machinery. It is pretty awesome to see these students sacrifice their time and talent to help others like this. We actually won the Minwax Community Craftsman national award for this several years ago and we received a $5,000 reward for new tools and machines,” Phillips said.
According to the National Institute of Health, toys like the wooden rocking toys that LHS students are making are an integral part of child development.
“The concepts of games and toys have a very important role in children’s lives. It contributes to the development of cognitive, motor, psychosocial, emotional, and linguistic skills. It also plays a key role in raising self-confident, creative, and happy children,” (Dag, Nevin Cetin, et al).
Each grade level of construction students made a separate style of wooden toy rocker such as a rocking horse, snail with a mohawk, and plane. The senior students built a rocking motorcycle and said that they had to learn specific skills to accomplish the project.
“I learned to be able to shape wood in ways I needed it to and how to use certain power tools and machines to make it easy for me to be able to do it,” said Owen Pancher.
“I’ve learned how to cut out shapes accurately to match the design of the motorcycle,” said Dylan Householder.“We have learned to shape wood in different ways to make the chair, and bottom rocking part,” said Emily Davis.
The Christmas holiday season is a time to give to others, and the Construction Academy students that they have received joy in the process.
“It’s a cool project that’s fun for us but also good for the kids. It feels good that it will be donated to kids who won’t really get much for Christmas and that I could be a part of helping them out,” said Householder.
“It feels pretty good because I like to help the people, and kids, and do whatever I can to better our society,” said Pancher.
“I like that the toy is getting donated and it feels good to help kids and families in need,” said Davis.
