Along the Tapajós - Day 1 - Week 4 (Mark Day School)

After lunch, we had a very special project reveal — Anna Gonzalez, our librarian here at Mark Day School, read us a book that will form the basis for our builds this week. Along the Tapajós transports us to the Amazon basin to a tributary of the amazon river through a sweet story about rescuing a turtle during the winter rains. Anna read the entire story and we all laughed as the brother and sister performed a daring rescue just in time to avoid the anaconda.

Welcome everybody! Week four of Summer Tinkering got off to a good start today. We spent the morning orienting everyone to the spaces, getting to know each other, establishing some group norms or agreements we can all follow, and training on the tools we’ll use this week. It was a busy morning!

After the reading, we broke into two teams to start designing — one group is working on making boats and animals for the river or jungle, and the other group is building a house on stilts! The design process can take a while to bring to consensus, but as the afternoon progressed, clear “must haves” emerged, and certain designs stood out. Just before we ended for the day, students got busy measuring and cutting. They’ll be ready to make some real progress on the structures tomorrow!

Enjoy the many photos from the day below! And to see more photos from throughout our week, visit our Flickr album.