First Day of Heavy Lifting

This week we want to create machines that make it fun(and easy) to lift, move and lower heavy things. But first we have to learn what tools we have and how to use them:

After everyone gets a good grasp of how to safely handle the chop saw and drills we head to park for a brain break!

Everyone enjoys a game of "Sleepy Cat" and we get to see some great sportsmanship as our Tinkerers include kids from other camps when they want to play too.

After lunch the Heavy Lifting theme is revealed and Tinkerers split into project design groups!

The "Smash-O-tine" group draws up and discusses how to build a machine to epically smash things on Friday!

The "GrabberMachine" group comes up with several options for their giant claw machine, then splits into the Claw and Crane groups to get to work!  

As ideas solidify into design plans the tinkerers get to work! There is some material experimentation to find out the best way to build some projects. Several groups got right to work cutting and assembling the basic structures of their machines.

At the signal that the day is over we heard a lot of groans, which is music to our ears. Then as good Tinkerers do we got to work cleaning up the shop so our space is ready to get right to work in the morning. In closing circle we shared stories of kids being awesome to each other - there was an overall report of positivity, good communication and team work!