President's Day Camp - Day 1
The first day of the Tinkering School President's Day camp began with an opening circle to meet each other and discuss group agreements.
Our first order of business was tool training. Kids rotated between stations learning how to safely and properly work with the chop saw, drills, and clamps.
After lunch, Gever shared what we were going to build by posing a Mad Lib. A Mad Lib is a series of sentences with missing words - the kids fill in the blanks. Our finished paragraph goes as follows:
"One day a giant KANGAROO met a really long KIWI. They found a KITTY ERASER and played with it all day. Afterwards, they went to the PEOPLE BOX stand because they were hot and sweaty.
And so our project was born - lets build a giant kangaroo, really long kiwi, kitty eraser, and a people box stand. The kids broke up into small groups to make sketches and brainstorm what they would make as a prototype.
After sketching, the group started working on their collective ideas. The kiwi team began by making an 8' base which could hold PVC pipe (which will serve as the kiwi's ribs). The kangaroo squad and the kitty eraser crew traced templates of their parts onto butcher paper, which would eventually be cut on plywood.
The people box team worked individually to make 4 different prototypes. Each representing a different idea for what a people box stand can be.
At the end of a productive day the whole tinkering group came together to share their ideas and begin to think about next steps.