Skills Work - At Camp!

St. Lawrence College, Kingston

I spent my last week of camp at St. Lawrence College in Kingston.  This summer went really fast!  How did I get to the end already?

Our first workshop of the week was actually a tour.  We visited the MacLachlan Woodworking Museum, and we learned how to make shakes.  They’re really old-timey and we had to use an old-timey way of cutting the logs.  It’s kinda hard to explain, so I got some pictures!  We used a kind of saw thing, and had to hammer on it to cut the wood.  That’s not like using a saw at all!  But it cuts it the right way.  That got us all ready to do a carpentry workshop and boy am I a pro by now!  We made mini paddles, and we got to use power sanders!  We all added different coloured strips of wood to the centre of our paddles so they were all unique.  Carpentry can be really artistic, but nobody seems to really talk about that part.  Anyway, our leader was Barry, and he seemed like he had hung out with kids a lot.  That was really cool.

Our next workshop was culinary.  I’m gonna have to have a party and invite over all my friends and then feed them all the stuff I learned how to cook this summer!  Chef Richard and Chef Ryan showed us how to make turkey kabobs, which we ate for breakfast right away.  Then we spent the rest of the morning making pizza and cookies and that’s what we had for lunch!  Well, I managed to save a few cookies to take home and I gave them to my sister.  My mom said that was nice of me, but really I was just stuffed from all the food I had already eaten.  Don’t tell her!

I think my favourite workshop of the week was masonry, because we got to actually make bricks.  I’m not joking!  Our leader, Dave, gave us a couple of different moulds that we filled with cement, and when it was almost dry, he said we could write our names in a brick or put a handprint in, and we got to take our bricks home!  That was cool.  We also learned how to spread mortar, and we did some surveying.  I always wondered what those construction workers were doing with that stuff!  They use it to measure slopes and levels and stuff.  Anyway, that was fun.

Our last workshop of the week was electrical, and we wired up a button to a bell so that when you pushed the button, the bell would ring.  And right after, we built propeller cars with our camp leaders, Jessica and Emily.  So the cars made a lot of sense, because we had talked about circuits and built one already.  The person who ran the electrical workshop, James, talked a lot about safety.  I definitely noticed a lot of people talking about safety this summer!  But James actually explained some stuff.  Like why we have to wear different types of safety gear, even when it doesn’t seem necessary.  I thought that was really helpful.

The week ended with our big TV debut!  CKWS came out to watch us after we finished making our gliders and filmed us doing our big launching competition!  It was so, so awesome.  We got to be on TV!  And the glider competition is fun – we make the gliders out of balsa wood and Styrofoam sheets and create them however we want, and then we have a contest to see who’s plane goes the furthest, or the straightest or whose is most acrobatic.  Did I mention it was on TV??

Well, I guess I’d better get my school supplies ready to go.  I had such a blast at camp, trying out lots of different skilled trades!  My school doesn’t have any design and technology classes, but I really, really want to take some when I get to high school!  I hope all my camp leaders had a great time too, because they were awesome!  Thanks, Skills Canada – Ontario!  Maybe I’ll see you next summer!!

Skills Work - At Camp!

Linamar, Guelph

Well, I’ve been dreading it, but it had to come – my last week!  I totally ended on the best note possible.  This camp at Linamar in Guelph?  It was an all girls’ camp!  I definitely didn’t need to worry about being the only girl!  It was so awesome to meet different women who work for Linamar in so many different trades.  And they let us use all kinds of machines and tools!

On the first day, we met Linda Hasenfratz.  She’s the big boss, so that was super cool!  Ms. Hasenfratz was so incredibly nice.  Her dad started Linamar way back in the 60s, and Ms. Hasenfratz told us all about her job and how she worked her way up through the company.  Then we got a tour of the facility and a presentation about safety.  I’m going to be the safest person ever after all this!

We had our leaders from Skills Canada – Ontario, April and Shannon, but we also had people from Linamar helping us through workshops too – Jamie and Chris.  Since we were trying so much new stuff, I was super happy to have extra help!

Our first workshop of the week was machining, something I had never done before.  But before we got started, one of the women who works at Linamar, Grace, talked to us about what machining is.  Good call, since it’s her job!  She was so totally enthusiastic about it, it was awesome!  Anyway, after that, we were given a piece of plastic, and then we had to do measurements to figure out what parts to cut off and how much.  Then Chris helped us use a machine to cut the plastic into the right shapes and specifications and ended up with…a pen holder!

On the second day, we did a workshop in hand tooling, I think it’s called?  One of the workshop leaders, Jen, is a millwright, which is somebody who repairs machines when they break down.  She knows a lot of stuff!  Anyway, she told us about what being a millwright is and how to use different types of tools.  We brought our pen holders with us so we could use different tools to refine them.  It was pretty cool.

We did an electrical workshop on Thursday, where we soldered a resistor to a LED bulb in a circuit.  I am so good at electrical work!  Maybe I should think about being an electrician too.  So many choices!  One thing I hadn’t tried before, we used heat shrink tubing to secure the connections.  Weird!  And also cool.

Our last workshop of the week was automation and robotics.  It was just awesome.  It was nothing like those nerdy robot shows on TV.  Robots are used all over the place in manufacturing!  They can be really simple and really confusing at the same time!  After we learned some of the basics, we programmed robots to touch different points on a grid, without knocking pegs over.  We were in two teams, and we competed against each other to see who could leave the most pegs standing.  Super fun!

 We also toured a few other facilities.  I really liked SkyJack.  I’ve seen those machines around, and I had no idea they were made in Southern Ontario!  Crazy.  Courtney, a welder at SkyJack, showed us a bit of how they’re made, and we got to see a giant robotic welder (see?  Robots everywhere!), and then we went up and down in the different lifts.  So fun!  Another tour we did was to a place called Vehcom, which is part of Linamar.  They told us about products they make and we asked lots of questions.

I’m really glad I did this camp after trying out a lot of other hand tools and stuff at other camps.  It really made the whole thing less scary and I felt more comfortable with some of the really unusual stuff I tried out this week.

What an awesome summer!  And here I was, totally thinking it was gonna be boring!  I have so many stories to tell my friends when I go back to school.  Good thing I don’t have to wait long!  Thanks a lot for a wicked summer, Skills Canada – Ontario!  Maybe I’ll get on a cardboard boat race team this year and see some of my leaders again!

Skills Work - At Camp!

Confederation College, Thunder Bay

During the last week of July, I made my way to Thunder Bay for camp at Confederation College.  The campus was bigger than I thought it would be, and they have a whole building just for skilled trades programs.

Our first workshop of the week was electrical.  It’s a popular one for Mondays, but I’ve done so many different types of electrical workshops that it has actually been interesting.  We wired batteries and then used the charge to pick up paper clips.  It was kinda fun, trying to see how many paper clips we could pick up.  I’ve done that with magnets, but I never thought about the magnetic charge of a battery before.  Plus we tried our construction skills at making bridges out of straws.  Our leader was Sandra, and she’s obviously used to working with kids our age.  She takes her electrical program into the schools around here or something, so she was totally prepared for us.

One thing I had never done before was welding.  I was soooo scared!  At first I thought the only danger was setting stuff on fire.  Then I found out that welding involves a lot of electricity, so I had to worry about electrocuting myself too!  Plus, there are like a million different types of welding and so many crazy tools you can use, like a plasma cutter.  I was so freaked out!  Our workshop leader, Jim, was amazing though.  He assured us that as long as we were using our protective gear right, and we weren’t messing around, welding was perfectly safe.  And you know what?  I made an awesome decorative hanger for plants, nobody got hurt, and it was really fun!  Who knew?

I was definitely back on comfortable ground with carpentry. We made a different kind of birdhouse than any before, and this workshop focused a lot on math.  Did you know that carpenters do all kinds of conversions in their heads?  They have to constantly calculate fractions, and convert between metric and imperial measurements – all without a calculator!  Anyway, my birdhouse was totally amazing.  Maybe I should be a carpenter, since I’ve gotten this good after just a few workshops!

I also had an automotive workshop at this camp, and I know nothing about cars.  (I don’t even care about cars, except that I can’t wait to have a driver’s license and go wherever I want whenever I want!)  I realized after this workshop just how handy it is to know the basics.  We learned what kinds of tools and computers are used to figure out problems with cars, and how to repair a flat tire.  Then we toured the truck and coach shop on campus and took turns sitting in a custom-built hot rod.  I would probably never do something like fix a flat tire, but it got me thinking about how useful it is to know how to change a tire, or even just how a car works.  I think I might take an auto class in high school, just to get more experience.

One morning at camp, we took a trip to Union Gas.  That was pretty cool, ‘cause my parents always talk about the “gas guy” coming to the house and paying the gas bill and stuff, and I never got it.  But now I totally do!  Willie, our tour guide, showed us some of the equipment they use to locate gas lines before building on a site, he showed us how to read a meter, and he talked a lot about safety.  Everybody talks a lot about safety at these camps!  But I guess if you’re going to work with electricity and gas lines and saws and stuff, that’s probably a good thing.

Not gonna lie, I never really thought about working in skilled trades.  But after four weeks at skilled trade camps, I really think I could do this stuff!  One more week to go!

Skills Work - At Camp!

Sault College, Sault Ste. Marie

My second-last camp was at Sault College in Sault Ste. Marie.  (I found out that "Sault" is pronounced “soo.”  Isn’t that weird?)  Anyway, Sault Ste. Marie was kinda far from everywhere else I’ve been, but there’s a lot going on in the town during the summer.  And the campus is pretty cool because they have so many different programs.  It was worth the trip!

On our first afternoon, a lady named Lisa came to our camp to talk about safety.  I already knew some stuff, because of hearing Eric’s presentation a couple of weeks ago.  But this was super cool.  Lisa split us into teams and had us go through part of the college to find safety stuff – good and bad.  My team found a tonne of stuff!  We’re so observant.

In our electrical workshop, we made a keychain flashlight that was also a strobe light.  Part of it involved soldering wires to a small electrical board, which is really hard!  Our workshop leader, Ken, was pretty patient with me though, and I got the hang of it in the end though.  It was fun, and now I have a flashlight keychain to show off!  Maybe going back to school won’t be so bad with all this cool stuff I have to talk about!

Electrical was in the morning, and then in the afternoon we did a culinary workshop.  We made cinnamon rolls from scratch.  Well, Jason, our workshop leader, had prepared dough ahead of time so that we wouldn’t have to wait for the dough to rise.  But he showed us how to make it, and I have the recipe so I can make it at home from scratch when I have lots of time.  I love this cooking stuff, it’s really fun!  And the best part is sampling everything you make – yum!

I got to do another hairstyling workshop this week.  Our workshop leader, Paula, taught me how to make a braid.  I tried braiding a mannequin’s hair, and that’s really hard too!  How do girls do it so easily??  Maybe it’s just a practice thing.  I even let one of the girls paint my fingernails.  But black nail polish only…I at least wanted to look like a rock star!

We did a lot of tours this week too.  We went through the airplane hangar at the college, which was neato.  They have a flight training program, and we got to sit in a lot of the planes.  One of the aircraft mechanics was there to answer questions about being an aircraft mechanic.  She told us that there are more women in aircraft maintenance than other types of motive power trades.  Apparently, a lot of women entered the trade during World War II, and that paved the way for more women after them.  I think my mom told me once that her grandmother was an aircraft mechanic during the war.  I’m going to ask her about that.

Continuing with our plane theme, we also visted the Bushplane Museum, and that was really fun.  I learned stuff, like how planes stay up and how the wings work, but I also tried out the simulator games and stuff.  It was awesome!  We also toured the Brookfield Wind Farm, which I thought was cool too.  Wind power is so amazing!  The farm had 126 windmills, and we actually got to go inside to see how they work.

I only have one more week of camp left!  Where did the summer go??

Skills Work - At Camp!

Conestoga College, Kitchener

I attended my third camp at Conestoga College in Kitchener.  The head office for Skills Canada – Ontario is in Kitchener too!  I just missed the camp held at the Waterloo campus, but since I had a blast this week, I’m okay with it.

 One of our workshops was broadcasting.  I had no idea it was linked to the skilled trades, but it’s part of the technologies.  It makes a lot of sense when you think about all the programming people do, and all the electrical equipment they use.  Our workshop leader was Mike, and he talked to us all about different radio careers, including all the recording and producing stuff.  There’s a lot more to it than sitting in front of a microphone and talking.  A lot of planning happens behind the scenes, and a lot of things are run by computers.  I’ve made lots of playlists on my iPod, so I got what Mike was talking about right away!  Anyway, we got to record commercials, and that was awesome!

In our woodworking workshop, three of the carpentry students at Conestoga taught us how to make our own game!  It was really fun, because we had to do so many different things – cutting, sanding and finishing the wood.  Plus, I learned how to play a new game!  And now when I show it to my friends, I can brag all about how I made it!  I’m getting to be a pretty fantastic woodworker, if I do say so myself!

I got to do another culinary workshop this week too!  I’m a pro at making pizza now, and I know how to make chocolate mousse from scratch!  I made it at home for my mom and my dad and my sisters, and they thought it was delicious!  Gary, the chef who led our workshop, told us a lot about how to become a chef, and the other things you can do, like writing a cookbook, or being a food critic or teaching.  I had started to figure out that skilled trades are an amazing way to make money and have a really fun time at work, but I didn’t know about all the other stuff you can do too!  Skilled tradespeople often own their own businesses, and teach their trades in colleges, training centres and the workplace.  And those are just two examples!  My sister wants to be a teacher, and I told her about teaching trades and she thought that was cool.

One thing I had never tried before was brick masonry.  I don’t know how brick masons do it – it’s really tiring work!  Lots of lifting.  And it’s a lot harder to build a brick wall than you think.  There’s lots of math involved, not to mention just having a steady hand!  Our leader for this workshop was Adam, and I would not challenge him to an arm wrestling contest!

Our last workshop of the week was working with clay, which was really creative.  And if I wanted to do any skilled trade, I would need to have artistic skill!  So we played with clay, and our workshop leader, Alyssa, showed us how to make different shapes.  And when we took it home, we could bake it make beads for jewellry!  Since I don't wear jewellry, I had no idea that's how they're made.  I baked mine when I got home, and it worked!  I'm not sure what to do with beads though...maybe my sister can use them.

Another awesome week all wrapped up!  I can't wait to see what's in store at my next camp!