Welcome To The County Fair - Day 5 - Week 2 (Mark Day School)

How do you measure, measure a week in the life of Tinkering School Summer Camp? 500 screws, 120 chop saw cuts, 28 drill press holes, 14 jig saw cuts, 61 feet of rollercoaster track, 21 tinkerers and 6 collaborators. But so much more than that:

• the grit and resilience to power through the completion of the rollercoaster. We asked for a few volunteers to spend their lunch reinforcing the tracks and half the camp joined in.

• the teamwork involved in holding wood with hands or a clamp so a friend can drive a few screws through two 2x3s.

• asking “How can I help?” and lending a hand to someone putting the finishing touches on the “Disaprater” (sic for all you Harry Potter fans) spinning ride.

By Friday, we are a well-oiled machine and even though we stress that one of our goals is not “finishing the project,” we all really, really want to have completed the rides and have something to show off when family members arrive in the afternoon.

It was quite the moment when we released the two-person cart for the first time onto the tracks and simultaneously spun the Disaprater with tinkerers and even parents aboard!

We keep our project sharing time short after a lovely closing circle where tinkerers share a favorite moment from the week. And then it’s time for deconstruction… our tinkerers take the lead with drills in hand to remove screws and reverse-engineer our builds so that the materials can be stored away and used again next week.

For even more photos from the week, see our Flickr page.

Click through the gallery below for more photos from today.