Farm-in-the-Blank Monday!

Brandon and Lillian collaborating HARD!

This morning we began practicing tinkering with a group of 10 kids.  To put our best feets forward we talk about how to treat each other and the tools safely and respectfully. One of the best parts of our tool trainings is that they offer lots of opportunity to practice collaboration, asking for help and offering help while experiencing the tools.

While we're clamping wood and driving screws we can also stop and notice what the wood is telling us: Is it wobbly? Why? Does it need supports? Where?

This square has a single screw at each corner and can turn into a diamond.

This square is also joined with single screws, but has a diagonal support and only wants to be one shape.

After lunch we all got together and filled out a "Mad lib" to determine what exactly we would be building. There were some pretty ridiculous suggestions and we narrowed down the options, with some voting and rock-paper-scissors competitions. In the end the circled words below are what we will be building this week:

We need to make a Tractor to harvest our Field of Toilet and Bee plants!

The kids who wanted to design the Tractor made a list of characteristics they wanted it to have:

then they built a plan off of those things.

The Field team had to put their farmer brains on and figure out how to plant and nourish Toilet and Bee plants. They decided to make their Field shaped like a Bee and maybe even have the Toilet plant be able to flush itself to water its own roots. 

Then it was time to BUILD!

Lillian writes her and Brandon's name next to the task they are taking on.

See more pictures from the day at our Flickr Album