We are used to living life for our own good just thinking about what is best for us and our family. There are only a few people in this world who think about other things and animals and what is best for them. Well in our PLTW class, we make sure that we think about the things that others usually don’t.

One of the modules that is provided for us is Constructions and Fabrication Basics, and basically what we did was build using different electrical powered tools. Although that sounded very easy when my team and I were reading through the instructions, it wasn’t easy. We were required to build a birdhouse out of different sized wood that a bird (of your choice) was able to live in. To begin with, we started of researching the different birds in the area. We chose the Sparrow, because it was small, and could fit into small places. At this point, we thought it wouldn’t be so hard because in our heads, a small bird would equal a small house, which is less building. After all of our research, we had to brainstorm different ideas of the layout of our birdhouse.

Brainstorming was not very easy, but it was not very hard. It had to be full of right angles, and had to be stable. What that means is that there could not be any dangling pieces of wood anywhere. That may have limited many of our ideas, but it was all about trial and error and we were willing to do that to make a birdhouse to the best of our abilities. When we finally came up with a birdhouse design, we had to get all of our measurements onto pieces of wood so that we were able to cut it. We used the different saw to cut the wood, and we used wood glue to make sure all of our pieces were put together as strong as possible. When we had all of the pieces where we wanted them, we clamped them, and left them to dry for 30-40 minutes. By the end of the drying time, it was the end of class.

When my team and I got back to class two days later, we unclipped all of the clamps and moved onto the final part of our birdhouse, which was painting. That didn’t take as much time as the glue did, but it did take us about 30 minutes to make sure that all of the paint was fully dry. Once we brought the birdhouse back into the classroom, we added a screw to the top of the birdhouse so that we would be able to hang it off of something sturdy. Although this was a long process, I enjoyed working with my group and learning more about the restraints and complication in building something as simple as a birdhouse.