Woodworking with Yoav Liberman
Every other Tuesday we are joined by noted Woodworking Teacher Yoav Liberman.
If you choose to opt-in to Woodworking, then twice a month your child will have a 40-minute focused session learning skills such as whittling and carving .
The children will be broken up into two Woodworking groups: Grades 1-2 and Grades 3-4-5.
Routine:
• After pickup and snack time at 3:10, Grades 1-2 will be escorted from the Garden up to Room 304 for their session.
• At 3:50 they will be brought back down and resume Honeysuckle in the Garden
• At 4:00, Grades 3-4-5 will go up for their session until 4:40. Then they will be brought back down to the Garden.
Each child will have their own personal toolkit to practice skills with at home!
This special feature to our program is available for Society Members in Grades 1-5.
Simply check “Woodworking Add-on” in the registration form linked below.
We hope you will join us!
Yoav Liberman | Teaching Artist & Woodworking Educator
Yoav Liberman is an accomplished furniture designer, author, and craft educator with more than twenty years of experience guiding young people through the practical arts.
At the core of Yoav’s teaching philosophy is a commitment to empowering children through authentic, age-appropriate handwork. He believes that working with raw materials directly cultivates a vital hand-and-mind connection. Through hands-on problem-solving and navigating the physical challenges of the medium, students build spatial reasoning, learn to work through adversity, and experience true accomplishment as they triumph through the learning process.
Secondary to this developmental foundation is guiding students in the safe, confident use of real hand tools—such as rasps, hand drills, pull saws, and whittling knives. By mastering these tools, children build fine motor control, patience, and pride of ownership in their personal toolkits. Whether shaping functional wooden utensils, small carved figures, or simple mechanical structures, Yoav inspires young craftspeople to connect deeply with wood and bring their imaginative ideas to life.
Deeply rooted in Waldorf and Steiner education, Yoav served for 13 years as the woodworking teacher at the Rudolf Steiner School in Manhattan. His background in higher-education craft supervision includes serving as a resident woodworking and art tutor at Harvard College's Eliot House, where he managed shop facilities, curated student art exhibits, and organized guest craft lectures. Today, he brings his expertise to students across several educational programs, including the Otto Specht School—a Waldorf program serving diverse learning styles—and the Endeavor 21 program, while also teaching adult workshops at craft schools across the country.
Yoav is the author of Working Reclaimed Wood: A Guide for Woodworkers, Makers, and Designers and an active writer for leading craft publications including Fine Woodworking, Popular Woodworking, and Woodshop News. Over his career, he has developed specialized woodworking, whittling, and kinetic engineering curricula designed specifically for classrooms and flexible learning spaces without conventional shop machinery.
