: I am a fifth grade teacher in Durham, NC. I have been pondering building a
: canoe or kayak as a classroom project. I've built a Ches 17 and am very
: familiar with the boat options, construction techniques etc. I am trying
: to locate other teachers who may have had a boat-building project for
: ideas about integrated lesson plans. I have some ideas but would like any
: other input from past experiences. It would be great to just go to the
: principal and say "We should build a kayak. They're cool!" but
: these days we will need to have a wholistic education package. Some
: schools are funny that way. :-) Thanks for any ideas.

OK. Go for centering on the history of the St. Laurance river area. You get early Americana, French and Indian war, Canadian history, development of open canoes (dugouts leading to birchbark leading to canvas-covered wood), Native American culture, use of and development of rivers as highways in the years before railroads.

From here you can spring to the voyageurs and trappers who opened trade routes to the west, and from that you can go to the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the search for the Northwest Passage.

Adney and Chappelle's book on skin boats of North America can be a reference, and from that you can lead into the development of skin covered craft by the native builders in the northwest.

This leads to discussions of foods and survival by people in arctic areas. (that my be a bit off topic for North Carolina -- do you get much snow there?)

You can then contrast these with skin boats made by Greenlanders, and build a frame for a kayak based on either tradition.

As mentioned, a discussion on displacement brings in a physics tie.

You can graph the patterns for your building forms by taking the numbers off of a table of offsets, or, if you go with a Putz Walrus, you cna get the Cartesian coordinates I've posted.

With a group, the problem is finding jobs for all the participants. With 5th graders you'll need to break up the building into many small tasks. The students are old enough to handle some tools, but power tools are not desired. Frames can be cut with coping saws. Short pieces of wood can be scarfed into long ones, but ripping strips is something you should farm out to adults, or a local millwork or lumberyard. Assembling the boat itself and covering it with canvas or Dacron is fairly straight forward, and does not require a lot of people. Test panels of 1 foot square pieces of fabric can be coated with different materials and tested for water repellency. Stick to coatings that are low in VOC's. Most water based paints, varnishes and polyurethanes should be acceptable.

I second the proposal that you avoid epoxy or other resins and consider building a skin-on-frame design. Putz's book has a quantity of good information.

Hope this helps
Paul G. Jacobson