TSO-A: It's good to be back
For the first time in two and a half years, welcome to Tinkering School Overnight Camp! What follows are photos and stories from Sunday–Thursday of Session A.
The crew walks up the hill to the build site after a rolling check in with Covid tests, name tags, and watermelon and cookies.
At the build site, we jumped right into an opening circle and tool training. Drill training sounds a lot like, “What do you think this button does?”
Drill training is followed by drill practice. The drill itself is the best teacher.
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Sunday evening was capped off by lasagna, Codenames, and card games. Time to rest up before project reveal tomorrow morning!
The theme is Natural Energy. We started by brainstorming: What types of energy can we use to move ourselves? Gravity, wind, solar...
The Rollercoaster Train team, choosing gravity, immediately jumped into making their car. Yuval established that a motto for the week was going to be measure twice, cut once. Last time he was at Tinkering School, another group made a roller coaster and they had to re-cut/assemble it 3 times. Roller coasters require precision!
Lydia and Harper work out plans for their team’s Bogabie. The Bogabie team is using gravity, along with wind via a parachute (maybe).
Lydia measures a cut for the Bogabie.
Joaquin, Abe, and Madelyn discuss wheels for their 5-wheeled, steerable car.
Oven and Thomas line up a cut.
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A birds eye view of the shop.
Breaks are important. The sky bench is quickly becoming a favorite place to take them.
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On Tuesday, in the early afternoon, we lost electricity. A perfect opportunity to pull out the twine and do some lashing.
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We brought our lashing skills to Beach Day! And our whittling skills.
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A theme throughout the week has been elaborate breakfast projects…
Coffee cake (hold the coffee)
Banana-chocolate chip pancakes
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On Thursday, Leslie, the Elkus Ranch Coordinator, gave us a tour of the animals. It was a love affair.
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An evening scene: poker and Catalyst kit play.
Evening scene 2: mafia.
Evening scene 3: movie night.
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It’s good to be here, building and playing big at Elkus Ranch. Project development photos and testing videos to come!