Shadow Puppets! Session 2 - Day 4!

Whoa! What a day at Junior Day Camp. 

We are four days into creating our shadow puppets, and we made some incredible progress today. Of the in-progress projects, the one that I ended up zooming in on today with the Tinkerers was the giant deer puppet with articulating joints. 

We started the day with a few boxes and a rough idea of what needed to happen, and in a very short time, folks were working together to install hips and knees that bend and rotate like a real animal. 

But! After working really hard to get all the joints moving, we ran into a problem. All that awesome movement-ability also meant that our critter couldn't support itself! Without a muscle system to support the wood, our deer's fully functional knee joints proved to be a little less than functional. 

We spent a long time this afternoon trying to get the structure to stand by itself so that we could maybe think about how to make it appear to walk. 

The deer team came up with the idea to temporarily prop up the critter to give us some time to think. And, with the help of a table and some team-constructed supporting blocks, we bought ourselves some time to tinker and brainstorm. 

By the end of the work session, we were able to start creating a support structure, as well as begin to create a head for the wooden critter. 

Tomorrow is our last work session! With all the progress that we were able to make in such a short period of time today, I can't wait to see the solutions we come up with tomorrow... as well as reveal our project to families!

(And then -- my favorite part -- take it all apart!)