Youth Programs

Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory runs a variety of youth programs for schools and youth serving organzations. Our most popular program is our basic canoe building program, part of our Marine Education Initiative. Classes spend the school year learning critical thinking, teamwork, reasoning skills through the challenging process of building a boat. Schools are charged a resonable fee for this work. Contact us for more information. Click here to view a video of the project from John Sole of Gurerilla Educators.

The Marine Education Initiative focuses a sharp light on hazy academic concepts. Not your typical classroom, the Wooden Boat Factory provides a very practical learning environment that lets students succeed using skills they develop individually. These skills can be as different and numerous as the boats we build. Which means that just about any learning style can achieve.

The need for this hands-on education ought to be evident in today’s job market, where changing conditions are the norm, and flexible understanding is crucial. Gone are the days of routine performance of tasks: Today’s workers need to be quick, smart and responsive. They need to know the whole process. Boat building is the ideal way to get such an education.

In classrooms as in life, when you can act on an idea, you own it. More than a vague notion, it becomes a working principal, a pattern of bodily understanding. Actions give life to ideas. But in how many classrooms can you act?

In ours, for one. The projects we create demand constant exercise of those same concepts our schools try to teach. Our programs illustrate academic concepts by applying them to the challenges of building a boat. In addition to this, our programs also explore the use of boats, the design of boats, the material used to make boats, and how to use boats safely and responsibly.

Learning takes place in our boat-building shop and outdoors at F.D.R. Park, located nearby. Many programs end with the launching of boats that students have built, a fitting and tangible conclusion to the learning experience: When students see their accomplishment on a project as complex as building a boat, they know they can do big things.

Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory provides boats to summer camps, non-profit organizations and nature centers. Thus, the Marine Education Initiative Program benefits not only students who participate in our programs, but countless boys and girls who will use the boats we build. This partnership means students are also fulfilling needs in their communities.