Today at Tinkering School, while carrying around tools in our hands and giant concepts in our brains (how do you get a drill to automatically start beating eggs and then automatically stop, anyway?), we also practiced something more widely applicable than an ability to get a wooden machine to make breakfast (actually that ability should probably be widely applied for the delight of breakfasters everywhere...)

Today, we practiced anticipating needs.

Tinkerers refilled screw stocks even when they weren't in search of a screw, moved batteries into chargers, showed others how to replicate complicated cuts of wood without replicating the hours of work it took to design the original piece, and practiced thinking two steps ahead in our projects.

Thinking two steps ahead, which is a particularly difficult activity when building completely unfamiliar objects like a "Pantslide" (a slide that slides you into your pants), and then acting according to the needs of the next next step, is part of what makes our community function and thrive. Not just in project steps and needs, but in human, social and spatial ones as well. And of course, anticipating needs happens all over life- when someone remembers to take out the trash, when someone knows when everyone will be hungry and brings snacks, when someone has water ready for you at the sideline of the race.

The ability to walk up to a situation or group, read it, and act based on that reading- this is a lifelong practice, and one of the things staff and kid tinkerers alike will take with us when we leave here at the end of the week.

"What's Needed Next" - WEEK 10, Day 3