Sunday
Opening day of the second week of Tinkering School (7-12s) proves more challenging than expected. Could it be that Robyn and Gever are still recovering from yesterday? Today’s project is creating chairs from cardboard, a simple idea, but too complicated for a shortened afternoon. Otherwise we are off to a great start: everyone settled in, ate their dinners, read their books, and now the house is quiet with the occasional sounds of slumber. [diary entry]
Monday
With renewed enthusiasm we finish up the chairs we started yesterday, and then spend the afternoon delivering eggs to the remote island nation of Pikinooi via giant slingshot - which turns out to be great fun for all involved. [diary entry]
Bonus videos: “A Good Launch“, “Nice Shot“, “Dinner Table Scene“, “Launch Rebound“, “Mush You Huskies”
Oh, and thanks to all the parents who let me know that the blog was down. It turned out that a critical machine at Dreamhost died yesterday afternoon.
Tuesday
A field trip to the garbage dump, a visit to the Zonkey farm, and an afternoon and after dinner of building boats, cars and airplanes - just another action-packed day at Tinkering School. [diary entry]
Before we begin the bonus videos I feel I must apologize to the parents of the children whom I have accidentally infected with a terrible earworm. You see, I was once in a band, and I wrote quirky lyrics, which gave me kind of a soft spot for quirky song-writers - like Jonathan Coulton who wrote a clever song called “Chiron Beta Prime” that was made into this clever video.
Well, I made the mistake last week of playing the video for the older kids, and Tywen, who is attending both sessions this year, begged me to play it for the younger kids - and then this started happening…
Bonus Videos: The Big Stink wherein our hapless Tinkerers are driven to the smelliest place on earth, Fiona performs a successful Propeller Adhesion Test, and Connor lets loose The Beast
Wednesday
We proudly present the world’s first and finest Caterpillar Cart. Today’s all-day build ends with some initial testing of the carts. We need to work on the linkages, but the Tinker-powered drive seems to be generating some motive force. We look forward to trying it in the parking lot tomorrow. [diary entry]
Bonus Videos: it turns out that getting into the Caterpillar Carts is surprisingly easy, and the view from the back of the train is exciting. Apart made possible, in part, by Sam’s Zen Drilling.
A note on social engineering
Tinkering School has only two, wait, three permanent rules:
#1 - Don’t hurt yourself or anyone else.
#2 - If you see a piece of fruit, and you want it, you must eat it.
#3 - If two or more people want the same thing, it must be resolved by ro-sham-bo.
To that, we add the perennial favorite:
#6 - We don’t talk about it. (Usually invoked at the dinner table when conversations drift into inappropriate topics)
Then over the course of the week, new rules evolve as the need arises. For example, Nikhil felt that we needed:
#14 - Don’t commit suicide unless absolutely necessary.
And when I noticed that people were getting bruised in the mad dashes that result when we announce a change of activity, I added:
#7 - Whoever gets there first goes last.
Thursday
Kind of a late night, so there may be some typos in the diary. We managed to pack quite a few events into the day… [diary entry]
Bonus videos: you know it’s a fun ride when it ends with “ouch!” fixed the link, sorry about that
Friday
We spend all day making rope for the bridge. Not everyone has the stamina for non-stop braiding, so several side projects develop including pine-needle surfing, downhill carting (made possible with the addition of a caster), and a few hard-core funk aficionados who were glued to the radio. [diary entry]
Saturday
Shwew! Gever’s voice barely lasted through lunchtime, but it was long enough for the triumphant success of the rope-bridge. Did we mention it was made from recycled plastic grocery bags? By 8-10 year old kids? Some of whom had never braided before? Plenty of video exists, and we promise you’ll see it. Soon. [diary entry]
bonus videos are being transcoded and loaded as fast as we can manage
As usual, you can look behind the scenes at the raw photos here.
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I love the vid of the “Beast”
Comment by jiro 08.01.07 @ 11:17 am