Magical County Fair - Day 3 - Week 2 (Mark Day School)

It’s day three and we’re humming along! That’s what happens when you start the week off learning to use tools and when your goals are aligned with helping each other and communicating about successes and failures. We know what needs to be done because we’ve had our design planning sessions. It’s wonderful to look around and see small groups of tinkerers working to make a section of track for the rollercoaster or figuring out how to add a sales counter and interior shelf to our game stand.

During our afternoon circle, we talked about how we’ve worked toward our goals. Anna elicited stories of ways tinkerers have collaborated, ways they’ve tried harder than usual, and any mistakes they’ve made (and what they learned from them!). I asked everyone to “raise your hand if you’ve been helped by someone else today.” Every hand went up, including those of collaborators. We model the behavior we hope to see and we appreciate when a tinkerer offers to help us carry wood or clamp something together that might need a screw or two in a moment.

We also celebrate learning. I learned from David that the jig saw has a setting for slowing down the blade to make a smoother cut. We’ve been using it on a faster setting which is certainly efficient but today when I was mentoring three tinkerers and giving them practice cutting circles out of plywood, that setting made it easier for all of us to stay on the lines we’d drawn using a compass. And when we asked during circle time who had used a new tool today, several tinkerers shared about the jigsaw experience and one tinkerer also mentioned learning to use the belt sander. These tools become part of our “backpack” that we can call on whenever we need to build something, fix something or design something new.

Some of the smaller moments of camp happen away from the power tools. Like when two kids stand at the white board and sketch out an idea for part of a contraption or make a “cut list” that tells everyone what lengths of wood and what quantity we still need to cut. And we’re also beginning an import phase of the week: testing! All sorts of questions arise from this: does the rollercoaster wobble when it runs down the track? What size should the holes be for the ball toss game? What angle works best for the giant marble run when the “marble” is actually a soccer ball? As we test, we evaluate the results, discuss and then refine our approaches for the next build session.

Please enjoy the videos and photos below. For even more photos from throughout the week, visit our Google Photos album by clicking here.