Along the Tapajós - Day 2 - Week 4 (Mark Day School)

Today was a busy, busy day of measuring and cutting and attaching wood to Build Things Bigger Than Ourselves (one of our goals). In the process, our tinkerers used new tools such as assembly squares for joining wood at 90º angles and a jig saw for cutting shapes out of plywood. And we found a need for trigonometry (probably my favorite branch of math!): how do you calculate the chop saw cut angle needed to make a piece of wood for a slanted boat? I could happily explain but one of our tinkerers went home yesterday, learned some trig and came back today with the same answer I had come to: 22º. There’s always something new to learn during Summer Tinkering!

Day two has a nice rhythm to it. Our tinkerers are trained on our three basic tools (chop saw, clamps and cordless drills) and when they need to use one of them they can. In our larger build group, teams worked to begin the process of assembling the house frame, dock, slide and ladder. We changed our minds about where the slide would go so that affected some of the dimensions for other builds and we adapted accordingly. And our second build group had an exciting moment! The boat became sea-worthy (or in our case, river-worthy) as wheels were attached and a paddle was located.

Each day, right before lunch, we “reset” our spaces by cleaning up and organizing our tools and materials. It’s a good habit to form and it also means we’re ready to work when lunch is over. And our lunch time is intentionally long to allow for plenty of time to play at the park. Today, I captured this lovely moment when Anna, our librarian and collaborator, led a few of the tinkerers in a build-your-own-story activity while slowly pushing them around on the “spinny tree.” Their attentions were captured and their imaginations were on full display.

Gallery

Click through the gallery below for more photos from today. And check out our Flickr album for a whole bunch more!