Excellent TED Talk, can’t wait to hear the other 45 (44?, but who’s counting) in your book!

Where did you come up with the idea for the Tinkering School?

I love the talk! can tinkeringschool come to Europe?
as a creative, visual design mum I would love to send my kids to your week of fun learning and exploring;-)

Found you via the video (via a friend’s blog). Loved it! What an awesome concept the Tinkering School is. I would have LOVED that as a kid. Wish I could come work for you and put my engineering degrees to good use!

I was very impressed with your TED presentation, but I have to admit that I am even more impressed with what you’re doing! This is simply AMAZING. Keep up the wonderful you and your wife are doing (oh, and please keep it going … our son has a little over fours to quality for Tinkering School

Tremendous advice. So much discovery and learning is being taken away by over-protective parents and the nanny state. Children are resilient and eager to learn. Great work!

I have one more for your GREAT list. Learning to shoot a gun in a controlled enviroment. Yes I’m from a rual location but the act of learning the rules to use a firearm is very important otherwise they will learn to do so from the kids they run around with at school. I have started my child with a paintball gun at 7yrs including what it feels like to get hit and the time honored “If you shoot it you eat it” credo. We must teach the rules of the game to a child so he does not learn the gangster type of thought pattern that is so common in the urban areas today.

Great talk! I recognize the problem very well. Here in Holland it is increasingly difficult to organize activities for kids due to strict regulations from insurance companies, fire brigades, city councils etc. etc. Therefore it’s increasingly less fun for volunteers to organize events.

Hi Gever - I really enjoyed 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do, which I found linked on Digg. In high school, my best friend and I gained invaluable knowledge outside of the classroom by doing things for which our parents would have grounded us eternally.

We had axes and matches, pellet guns and bowling balls. We learned about explosions and fire and the best way to put out fires. We learned about inertia, velocity, trajectory, and first aid. We got splinters and burns and he got some shrapnel one time, and we got cut and bruised and I almost lost a thumb and we both know how much it sucks to get electrocuted.

But in all those years, we never suffocated on plastic wrap or choked on a board game piece. We learned what was safe and what wasn’t, first hand, and we learned it in permanent, unforgettable ways. I worry about children, even from my generation, who aren’t allowed to interact with potentially dangerous properties. Rather than teaching children what is safe and unsafe about everything they will encounter, we take a shortcut by having them avoid unsafe things altogether. That doesn’t help them grow up.

Maybe my friend and I took it a bit far at times, but I don’t think anyone can argue that what we did wasn’t ultimately useful to our development.

That was a great talk. Simply Brilliant. I have a six year old that I’m trying to teach some of those very things (and you gave me some ideas) much to his moms dismay at times.

thanks if you are ever in atlanta send me a email I’d love to talk .

This is one the best talks I have seen in a long time, a simple yet innovative way to think about the growth of our children. Thanks for sharing this.

Great talk… I had a childhood where I was allowed to explore all the things mentioned in your talk… and it made me a curious person. Even today, I take i.e. a printer apart before putting recyclables out to the curb, just to learn how stuff works.

Only two have been sent home with injuries? I’ll pass on this charade.

Funny that I saw this clip the day after hearing the “All Wheel Drive Jungle Gym” episode on Car Talk. A woman called in who had 4 kids ages 6-10 who adore taking stuff apart. She wanted to set up an old car in the yard for the kids to play in and take apart and she called in to ask for advice on how to kid-proof it a bit (e.g. remove flammable & toxic liquids). I thought it sounded like a great idea but the hosts thought it was a terrible idea and thought the kids would get their fingers crushed by a carburetor.

You’re on Digg’s front page for videos. I’d like to give your book to everyone I know who has kids. Hope to see it come out soon.

Wow! Amazing talk! I really think the whole bubble wrap your children mentality is a serious issue facing western culture with this generation of kids. We don’t realize how much is being missed in the development of a child by not allowing them the freedom to explore and learn from the world around them. Kudos to you for recognizing this problem, and creating a really innovative, and fun solution!

I love your TED presentation. It brought back great memories (I’m 46) like making and throwing spears and sitting on my mom’s lap and driving her car in a big empty parking lot when I was just 7 years old.

In the latest issue of Make Magazine there are instructions for making a cool spear (dart) throwing device called an atlatl. When my 8 year old son saw the photos he said “Let’s make that daddy!”.

A year ago I took my son to the World Champion Punkin Chunkin contest in Deleware (google it) and we became totally inspired. We witnessed a couple of dangerous near misses but MAN was it cool to see pumpkins fly so far! We built a cool trebuchet from a kit that hurles golf balls - - you can see a video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7960942331526208008&hl=en

I can hardly wait to get a copy of your book.

Just found your website from the TED talk you did. Great talk - inspiring. Just off to buy some matches and two swiss army knives for my boys.

Thanks

Rhys

Thanks, thanks for this talk.

The video was still running, and already I was looking for your book on Amazon (just to find out it wasn’t out yet)

Driving a car is the only one of those things my 9-years old hasn’t done yet, and breaking up appliances is the one he loves most. A VCR-motor part, just like the one the girl was holding in your presentation, is the starting part of his cyborg costume for this year.

As for a knife, a round-tipped Opinel like this one is perfect (note the locking ring) and the manufactures itself reccomends it starting from age 7. My kid keeps building his own tools, magic wands and spears with it.

Can’t wait for your book to get out. Please finish it before he grows up!

5 things….

I COULDN’T AGREE MORE! (emphasis added)

Our society is raising a generation of ‘bubbleboys and girls’ with no experience short of their IM client and cell/text phone. Might as well lock them in and remake the http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074236/ greatest John Travolta movie ever!

Bring the Mobile Tinkering School to PA next year and we’ll use fire to make some championship BBQ!

I enjoyed the presentation. How’s the book coming? I can’t wait for it! Cheers, David

Probably a little late for the clarification but no one has ever been injured at Tinkering School requiring anything more than a small band-aid. And no one has left early - only as scheduled at the end of the session (possibly with a small band-aid still stuck on). Most of the band-aids were for a couple of adult helpers (who did not unfortunately grow up using a pocket knife, or, apparently, a kitchen knife).

I thought I was alone in this way of thinking thank the Lord I’m not the sane parent out there, an excellent talk/concept.
I’m in South Africa and although it’s not as bubble wrapped as the states it is still over protected and over regulated.
I’d love to start something like tinker school here. Any ideas how to get it started.
My son and I built a water atomiser than runs on the car battery and splits the water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen gas - we had a lot of fun lighting the gas - makes a nice bang. the idea was to feed the gas into his mom’s car’s fuel system and see if it’ll run but we haven’t got that far yet.
I also echo the sentiments of the firearm dad, as a sport shooter I have firearms in the house and I wanted my kids to know how to handle and shoot them safely. I was a kid once and I know they will find a gun at a friends house and they need to know the rules so nobody dies.
Thanks again!
Regards
Neil Poynton - real dad

Saw this video on Plain Jane Mom’s blog. I loved the speech and love the idea of your school, but alas, live too far away. I have a question of logistics, however — I have access to old appliances and wondered what you did with yours once you took them apart? Are you able to haul them off to the dump? Our church receives a lot of old appliances and I may be able to convince them to let me do a session with the kids to take them apart but I’d have to be able to dispose of things once the session was over. Thanks! Keep up the great work!

The biggest risk of letting your kid have a pocket knife is that they will bring it to school and get expelled! (maybe a valuable lesson to be learned is to learn that different rules apply in different situations) Otherwise, you have inspired me.