Giant Insects - Week 1 - Boys & Girls Club - Willie Mays Clubhouse

Spring is here! And that means our Tinkering School collaborators are excited to welcome two new tinkering crews to our Willie Mays workshop :)

Name tags and snack time. Tinkering can be very tiring sometimes...good to have extra fuel reserves!

To start our session, we each picked one of the four tinkering school goals we wanted to focus on individually and accomplish during our weeks together. We also spent time brainstorming a list of group agreements for how we wanted to treat each other, and how to use tools and the workshop safely.

After agreeing to agreeably uphold our group agreements, we jumped into tool training! First up...

DRILLS!

(The coveted favorite of many a young tinkerer :)

Reggie explains the fine art of collecting screws, drill bits, and screw bits in a one of our most important safety devices - the screw bucket. You would be amazed where screws can end up without a good container nearby!

Learning about the drill's buttons and switches and all their functions.

We always demonstrate the safe and proper use of a particular tool before we supervise the kids as they try them out themselves. Below, Reggie shows one way to measure how deep a drill bit will go. (Measure on the outside of a piece of wood!) It's a useful technique to avoid drilling into a unintended surface (concrete, table top, etc).

Snapshots courtesy of one of our tinkerers. Looks like this crew isn't having much fun... ;)

Julie demonstrates how to remove a drill bit. We always drop them into a bucket because they can be hot after drilling, and also to avoid round objects rolling around on the ground. 

At Tinkering School we believe that the best way to learn is to try things ourselves. To have a chance to make mistakes and learn from them. Everyone had an opportunity to practice their new drilling and screwing skills. They also got lots of chances to collaborate and help each other by holding down the wood blocks while their partners drilled. As Reggie likes to say, "teamwork makes the dream work!"

Drilling and screwing are some of the foundational skills we teach tinkerers. Next week, we'll learn how to use clamps and the chop saw. And we'll discover what we'll be building! Stay tuned to find out what our mystery project will be!