We started our day with a discussion of brave things we have done such as ways that we stood up for what we believe in or took a risk to achieve our goals.

Then the girls learned how to tie bowlines. It took some practice and teamwork to get good at it.

Lizzy shows Emilia how she ties a bowline.

The girls used their new knot to play a game: The rules- Find a partner, then tie a bowline in each end of a short piece of rope and loop one over each wrist. Your partner does the same but you link your lines before she puts the bowlines on her wrist. Then comes the challenge, unlink yourselves without removing your hands from your loop or untying the line. Its possible but takes creative thinking!

Then we played a game with bowlines.

There was some contortions.

And good teamwork.

Once everyone mastered the bowline game we headed down to the shop. The boatbuilding group patterned frames, carefully making models that represented each angle and dimension of the planks inside the boat. They then transferred their frame patterns onto sapele wood and cut them out on the bandsaw. The bandsaw cuts were a little larger than the pattern, so the girls used hand planes to bring their frames down to the marked lines.

Fiona planing her frame

Fiona shows the frame she made.

The bench project group continued to cut and plane the sides for their tool trays. They also got to use a grooving tool called a plow plane to carefully plane a groove in the bottom of their tool trays for the base of the tray to “float” in. The consensus was that it took some practice to use this new specialized plane but that it was very satisfying!