Over the past three weeks, the woods 1 class has been making and designing cutting boards. Woods teacher Jeremy Todd said the cutting boards will be donated to two different organizations.

“One of [the organizations] is the K-State Research and Extension office in Wyandotte County; they have a project called the Kitchen Restore project,” Todd said. “The other one is Mission Adelante and they house refugees in the community.”

For the cutting board project, sophomore Ethan Jekic said they are using donated wood from a local window restoration company.

“A lot of the scraps were too small so we had to glue some of the pieces together,” Jekic said. “Then, finish all the wood and put mineral oil on it so it is safe to use the cutting board.”

Junior Tyler Wedekind said there were multiple steps to completing the project and it took several class periods.

“First, we have to pick out the perfect dimensions and all the wood,” Wedekind said. “Then we cut it to dimension size and sand it, we make the pattern and then glue it all together.”

Wedekind said this project helped give the students creative freedom instead of having to follow guidelines.

“It was definitely more fun because we just got to use what we wanted to use,” Wedekind said. “We got to decide how the cutting board would be made and what it would look like.”

Todd said he has been planning the project since the beginning of the school year for a fun and interesting way to utilize the donated wood.

“I think it’s a good idea for students to help local organizations as much as possible,” Todd said. “Especially charity because they get to build stuff and be creative while they do it.”