It is a tradition for all students in the 5th grade at the Haley Pilot School to build wooden boats. Building boats allows students to apply their classroom STEM skills. My students are very excited to use tools and learn to paddle on Jamaica Pond!

The 5th grade students keep telling me that after working so hard to build, they want to be able to paint their boats with creative designs. An Awesome grant would help us to buy paint and hire a local Visiting Artist so that all 75 fifth grade students next year could express their ideas about the world by painting the boats they have built.

After painting their boats, students will launch them on Jamaica Pond and learn to paddle. Then the canoes will be exhibited in the school lobby, at the Jamaica Plain Library, Jamaica Pond, and other public spaces around Boston. Students will create written pieces about the building process and their boat-art to exhibit alongside their boats.

Creative Boat Art would add an arts and humanities piece to the existing Boat Building curriculum, so that the project would become truly interdisciplinary, and hit all the state standards through an exciting, hands-on project.