Wooden Benches for Schools
- Wooden school benches can turn "Please take your seats" into an adventureBANC PUBLIC image by Marie-Th??r?¡§se GUIHAL from Fotolia.com
In the one-room schoolhouses of history, students sat straight-backed on plain wooden benches, lined up in orderly rows. It's a quaint image that has nothing to do with the possibilities for wooden benches in schools today. Students who are asked to think outside the box could get a little help from their surroundings. Wooden benches for schools can be literal seats of learning. - Wooden school benches can be perfunctory and boring--nothing wrong with tradition--but they can be dazzling leaps of imagination, too. Which would inspire students to be the creative thinkers that schools of the twenty-first century aim to turn out? A classroom or a library could use a rocking bench, a twisty bench that works as double seating for two readers facing away from each other, a bench of slats that pour over the seat edge and turn into a writhing tangle of vines that run up a wall, a bench made of a whole log--bark and all--with chair backs for seating, a long, long bench that joins together a lineup of chairs. Or how about a two-seater bench that fits together like a puzzle for lectures and pulls apart to make solo benches for test taking? Is it MoMA? Or is it PS 141?
- For a classroom corner or a schoolyard reading garden, a simple wooden bench can be a lesson and a seat all in one. Artisans make benches of cypress, cedar and teak with sea creatures for the seat backs. The wood ages well when exposed to weather and is beautiful enough to be inviting indoors as well. One craftsman offers mahi mahi, dolphins, swordfish and colorful parrots as part of the bench design. An appealing way to reinforce environmental lessons and provide a place to study those subjects at the same time. A "green" school might place a shark bench next to an aquaculture pond. An urban school might transform a slice of its asphalt playground into a conversation pit with a marlin bench, a few low tree stumps or boulders for extra seating, and a couple of container trees.
- Preschool benches can be dragged around from story circle to puzzle table and will gets lots of use. If wooden benches are painted with alphabet letters, colorful numbers, series of like objects such as apples, pears and berries or baseballs, basketballs and soccer balls, learning concepts come right along with the classroom furniture. Low benches for shorter people can also have cubbies built in where rain boots or lunch boxes can be stored out of the way. Those are great near the door where it is useful to sit down while tugging on snow pants or tying sneakers. A wooden bench with a seat that pulls up to reveal a toy box can hold games, blocks or naptime mats. Wooden benches take a lot of punishment all year but are sturdy enough to refinish or repaint over summer break.
