Upper school students in Jack Bowen’s woodworking classes at Applewild School in Fitchburg, Mass., get to design and build their own furniture.

The shop program begins in kindergarten, so students who are in seventh or eighth grade have had many years to learn the intricacies of working with a variety of different woods.

Eighth-graders Jordan Remar and Luke Chapdelaine, both of Hollis, created impressive projects. Jordan built a 6-foot-tall book shelf and Luke built a chess table, which required inlays of different woods to design the chess grid. The works were displayed at the school for the annual Applewild About Arts show.