Students craft holiday hot wheels
Photo by Aaric Bryan<br>St. Regis students Zach Lott and Palm Preechapun put the finishing touches on a toy car for the Women in Timber food baskets in the St. Regis wood shop Tuesday.
Henry Ford would be proud.
St. Regis shop teacher Dave Jensen and seven of his students used an assembly line technique to mass produce 40 wooden car toys, to be put in the Clark Fork Valley Women in Timber food baskets. The baskets were delivered to families across Mineral County by the Superior Lions Club Saturday, Dec. 22.
Taking time out from the assembly line Tuesday, Jensen said the students have been working on the cars for about five days and seemed to be catching on to the assembly line production. "Everybody does his part," he said. He said once they got the hang of it, they could turn out about 10 cars a period.
Jensen started to say they could have made more, but the tires were taking a little extra time, before he was interrupted by Johnathon Kelley saying that they needed more tires. Jensen said the tires took a little longer because of the obvious reason that each car needed four of them and one particular student wasn't being as careful with them as he should have been. "I think Zach Lott set the record for breaking tires," Jensen joked. Lott then assured Jensen that he could fix the tire he had broken minutes earlier.
Jensen said making the cars was a "win-win" situation for his students. He said not only do they get to learn about helping others and feel the satisfaction that comes with it, but they also get to shirk their normal classroom duties. "They'll do anything to get out of their regular class," he said.
Jensen said that he used to make cars for the Women in Timber group every year, but decided to stop about eight years ago. "It got to where every kid in the county had two or three of them," he said. He said after eight years most of the children had grown up and he decided it was time to do it again. "I figure there is a new crop of kids in the county," he said.
Jensen said that he plans to make the cars next year and might even add in a bag of blocks they make from wood scraps. He said they have done the blocks before and he can't believe how popular they are. "[The kids] can have a $50 present next to them and all they're interested in is a bag of wood blocks," he said.