Day 5… we finally made it to the Amazon! During our morning circle, we reflected about our goals for the week and we reminded ourselves that our goals never included “finishing the project.” But this group of kids is a very hard working group and they were determined to keep pressing on. In fact, at lunch, we offered anyone interested the chance to work through part of recess/lunch to complete the dock and raise the house (and raise the roof!) onto it. Some of our youngest tinkerers were up for the challenge and put in about another hundred screws before everyone else got back from the park.

I think that sometimes we take for granted all that happens during a week of Summer Tinkering camp. Parents and guardians see the progress on the blog and hear stories from their kids and may join us on the last day to see the project show & tell but there’s not always a clear understanding of how we got from A to B.

When we start the week, we provide a theme and two general builds (“a house on stilts and a boat”). These, along with our available materials and tools, provide necessary constraints for our week. But everything else — including the shape, size, look and any actions — are provided by the kids themselves. As adult collaborators, we are there to lend a hand and to offer advice when needed but most of our work is setting the tone and making sure relationships are good (everyone feels included, everyone has a job to do). It’s the tinkerers who have the vision and see it through.

We didn’t foresee a slide, for example, and it turned out to be one of the most popular parts of the week. And we weren’t sure how many boats we’d be able to build or what types of animals we’d include (a snake head near a tree served as a reminder of the wild aspects of the river).

It’s part of the delightful aspect of this camp that we’re often as surprised and amazed as the tinkerers when we see the how much we’ve accomplished and what’s taken shape by Friday afternoon. And kids think of things we don’t, like curtains for the back window of the house and illustrations for the inside of the large boat. It’s these details that give such charm to the builds. They wouldn’t be the same without them.

We celebrated our hard work by climbing the ladder to the house, sliding down the slide, checking out the snake, and riding a boat or two along the river. And then it was time to take everything apart and return the wood and screws and other materials to their starting places. This sense of impermanence is something that we feel actually makes our memories of the camp stronger.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this voyage and that you’ll join us again next summer!