Dinosaur Safari - Day 3 - Week 2 (Mark Day School)

Five hundred 2x3s, twenty six children, six hundred screws

How do we measure, measure a day?

In clamps on, in sanding

In lunchtime and spinny trees

In angle cuts and dino teeth

In ladders and ramps

In five hundred 2x3s, twenty six children, six hundred screws

How do you measure a day in the life?

How about tinkering?

Measure in tinkering

Seasons of tinkering

(I may have recently seen the musical Rent…)

But that’s not our official theme song. That honor goes to Dinosaur Train, a beloved PBS kids show from when my kids (Hope and Abby, both junior collaborators this week) grew up that aired from 2009-2020.

But because we don’t tell kids what to make, we’re not making a train. That’s just for inspiration. The ideas for our builds come from our brainstorming design session on Monday. And this week we’re building a jeep that careens down a ramp into the safari where we will have a massive dinosaur with dangerous teeth. We’re starting to come up with adjectives for our creations. That’s a sign that (a) they are really taking shape, 3-dimensionally out of wood and other materials and (b) our imaginations are engaged and the stories we’re creating and then re-telling about our week are beginning to really sink in.

We powered through today, and collaboration (one of our goals!) was in full effect with kids holding wood or adding a clamp so that their partners could drill a pilot hole for a screw or draw a line to be cut on the chop saw.

We also brought out some new tools for tinkerers to learn to use: a band saw, a mini circular saw, and rotary sanders. It’s a philosophy that we mirror in our tinkering classes at Mark Day School: a tool is a tool is a tool; this idea that once you are comfortable using various tools, they become like anything else in your environment (or toolbox, if you like) and you think less about having to pick which tool or learning how to use it and instead simply use the tool you need in the moment to achieve your goal.

Another one of our goals is try harder than usual and we saw a lot of that, from big groups of tinkerers carrying our heavy ramp to attach to our platform to smaller groups working to assemble the feet of the dinosaur.

We hope you can join us this Friday at 2pm for our big project reveal!

For even more photos from throughout our week together, visit our photo album.