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Sloyd Experience

The Program That Brings Woodworking to Child Development

Article by Emily Tobiason

Photography by Courtesy of the Company

Originally published in Boulder Lifestyle

Luke and Allison Johanson were watching TV one night when an episode of the 37-year-old PBS show “The Woodwright’s Shop” came on the screen. The program features Roy Underhill’s woodworking using simple early American hand tools. After scrolling through a list of episodes, Luke clicked on the one titled “Who Wrote the Book of Sloyd?!” 

The episode highlighted a 19th-century Swedish educator and author, Otto Salomon, who advocated for the combination of physical activity with a child’s education. He wrote a book titled “The Teacher’s Handbook of Sloyd,” which guided teachers in implementing crafting into their curriculum. 

“As we continued to watch, my mind was racing. My dominating thought was, ‘We need this for the children of the world now, more than ever before,’” Luke says.

Thus was born the idea for Sloyd Experience. Four years in the making, Luke and Allison have developed a program where elementary and middle school children learn to woodwork. Sloyd Experience welcomes mistakes and encourages perseverance while aiming to build self-reliance, concentration, neatness and a love for labor. 

Your website touches on the importance of “working with your hands.” Why a specific focus on woodworking? 

Wood, as opposed to metal, paper, clay or cardboard, has more life to it. Working with wood develops a different dimension of appreciation and respect for nature and all of its beauty. Most kids know what growth rings are on a tree, but here they get to feel how they respond when worked upon in different directions and different ways. The grain, the color, the smell—exciting and inspiring kids through connection with the real world—it’s AMAZING.

It is incredibly important for children to respect risk at an early age. I believe the only way they can respect it is if they experience it…if they feel it. Furthermore, by entrusting them with this risk, we are empowering them. By no means do we completely eliminate risk, but we do put the risk, and therefore responsibility, in their hands - literally. 

What does each workshop look like?

Sloyd Experience utilizes individual instruction, not classroom instruction. Every student progresses through our curriculum at their own pace. Models are not necessarily finished in one session (in fact, VERY few are). Some of the more complex models can take well over five sessions to complete. One thing that is certain on each of these finished models is that the work is only accomplished by the student. An instructor doesn’t assist or work on a student’s work in any capacity. The sense of accomplishment and conclusion is purely from the work of the student.

What are your future plans for the program?

We are excited to announce that we are now a “Community Partner” of the Boulder Valley School District. In this capacity, we are able to offer programming as part of the curriculum. Beginning this fall, every second grader at Louisville Elementary School will partake in one Sloyd Experience session per week. 

Our goal is to continue to add grade levels and schools. We are continuing to work on refining the program so that it can be replicated and we can equip and train educators outside of our community so that the impact of Sloyd Experience is not limited to Boulder.


More information on Sloyd Experience, including fall programming information, can be found at SloydExperience.org.

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