Dessert World! - Day 4 - Week 3 (Mark Day School)

During our opening circle this morning, we talked about “interactions and chain reactions.” How can we do something to make something else happen? Some of the suggestions includes dominoes and pulleys. And during project orientation, Anna shared a prototype of an expanding coat hanger design that we might use for just such a purpose.

Today, we built and built and built. The conveyor belt “track” was installed, the roof went onto the tunnel, the banana boat got decorated with delightful wooden candy canes, and the curtain walls went up on the cake to hide its magical dessert maker insides. And there was messy fun as small groups of tinkerers made ingredients and desserts for the dessert machine and others crafted candy from household items. Quite a few tinkerers shared during our circle about using new tools including the band saw, mini circular saw and disc sander.

By Thursday, we don’t even think twice about a kid grabbing a cordless drill off the wall, attaching a battery, putting a drill bit into the drill, drilling a pilot hole and then driving a screw until flush in the wood. They are even installing pocket screws! These kids are empowered and they feel empowered. It’s great to be able to trust them to know what to do and how to do it. As collaborators, we become less important as the week goes on. And that’s by design.

We ended the day with appreciations in our closing circle and took time to share about how we had met or worked towards our camp goals. These kids are working hard and are excited to share with you everything they’ve designed, tested, and built tomorrow at 2pm during our project reveal. We hope you can join us!

For many more photos from our week, visit our Google Photo album.