Hello fellow teacher!
I used school to justify ordering my Glowforge. I told myself that if I could come up with 50 things I could use it for in class I could get one - here’s my list
My kids are a bit older than yours - 9 and 10 year olds, but you might be able to get a few ideas out of it.
Would it be ok if I saved a copy of that doc and took some inspiration from it for my 9-year old nephew?
A hand turkey was actually @dean’s first test of the trace function! Can confirm, works great. 
I believe my words at the time were: “This is the killer app for the Glowforge. This is it. Hand turkeys!”
Can confirm, predicted hand turkeys as killer app from the start.
Hand turkey growth chart!
Just be sure to remove hand between scan/trace function and cutting function!
Kindergarten supplies check list:
@dan Does the trace function work with crayons and pencils or only markers? Either way would be fine but we tend to do a lot of crayon work lol.
One thing I find handy (even at the graduate and post-doc level where I teach) is that relations between abstract things become way easier to understand when you can hold and view relationships between the concepts. Learning anatomy from a book is hard, learning anatomy from a puzzle that goes together like the real parts way easier.
It would be an even better project to have the kids design a teaching model (like a body where the body parts only go together in the right way) and of course you can swap parts to make the person tall, short, have a prosthetic hand, etc so kids learn diversity. You can make other versions (differences between planes, trains and automobiles by making them match up with the medium [train + tracks, etc]). The cool thing is you can whip them out quickly, and they can color them or you can have them design them to teach other kids (because if you can teach it you really know it)…
For the moment it’s tuned for sharpies, but other drawing supplies are definitely in the feature hopper.
That’s kind of what I figured but hey it was worth a try. Thanks for the response. I look forward to getting the ol’ forge.
any chance of ink jet onto the proof grade into the hopper for when we just can’t get one of the supported file types?
How soon before Back-to-School shopping lists start including "acrylic samples, veneer swatches, 3x5 baltic birch packs, safety(laser) glasses… 
You can absolutely scan a drawing with the ‘trace’ feature, remove the drawing, and then print over material.
Dan,
When using the ‘trace’ feature, should the picture be set on the material already then just remove the pic? Or, will the camera show the substrate after the trace and allow you to position the traced image ( so you can center it or optimize the location of the cut or engraving on the substrate)? Yhx
Both work well. It will by default put the traced image in the same location, but you can opt instead to move it around (e.g. onto a new piece of material), resize it, etc.
Ooh. This will be useful when multiple kids are working together. (or adults for that matter)
That’s an incredible list!
I want to do this stuff with my kids… with or without school.
Really great.