Hands learn too
Every child spends at least four hours a week in workshops. Real materials, child-sized tools and teachers who are masters of their craft.
Woodshop
With Recep, a cabinet maker for forty years, children learn to measure, mark, and use a saw and sandpaper. Every term each child takes home something they made.
What do we make?
- Birdhouses, pencil holders, bookmarks
- Project models and bridges
- Seed boxes and plant labels for the garden
- A bookshelf for the class (Year 4)
Goggles and aprons are always worn; saws and drills are used with a teacher, at most four children at a time.
Kitchen workshop
The school's teaching kitchen has child-height worktops. With Aynur children read recipes, weigh, chop and knead; they eat what they made together at lunch that day.
What do we make?
- Shepherd's salad, lentil patties, beans in olive oil
- Bread and pide dough
- Soup with vegetables from the garden
- A recipe booklet (each class writes its own)
Child-safe knives are used; hob and oven are only switched on under a teacher's control. Separate ingredients are prepared for children with reported allergies.
Music workshop
Rhythm starts in the body: clapping, stamping, voice games. Then darbuka, frame drum, claves and recorder. At the end of the year each class writes and sings its own song.
What do we make?
- Rhythm and voice games
- Turkish folk music and children's songs
- Recorder (Years 3–4)
- A class song and the end-of-year concert
Sound levels are measured in class to protect hearing; drumming sessions are kept short.
Garden workshop
Each class has a raised vegetable bed. Sowing, watering, composting and harvesting run on children's rotas; the harvest goes to the kitchen workshop.
What do we make?
- Growing seasonal vegetables and wheat
- Compost and a worm box
- Raising seedlings in the greenhouse
- Watching birds and insects
Gloves are worn; garden tools are child-sized. A first-aid kit for bee and insect stings stays in the garden.
Come and sit in one of our classes one morning.
A school visit takes 45 minutes; you see the classes, workshops and garden while lessons are on.