Friday was HOT. Ninety nine degrees of HOT!
Here's the bottomline: Despite the heat, we tried really, really hard. We made a lot of mistakes and also learned from them. We collaborated and make some awesome friends, and we build something way, way bigger than ourselves!
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I think the name of the game today was precision. And in order to be precise, we had to work really really slowly. Because, people tend to make mistakes when they work too quickly. I know one of our goals is to make mistakes and learn from them, but there are the mistakes where you really thought something would work, and then there are the mistakes where you tried to get something done quickly.
Read MoreTeamwork is hard. It's hard because we are training tools and skills that are largely individual. One person at a time on the chopsaw. A drill is a two handed tool (usually the two hands belong to one person.) Clamps are pretty much designed to be used by one person and not a team.
So, while we're teaching these tools that are designed for use by one person, in just one week, we are also unteaching that.
How many people can it actually take to put one screw into two pieces of wood? No, this isn't the set up for a bad joke. I'm being serious. How many?
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It's day three here at camp in San Francisco, and folks are feeling pretty comfortable with using the tools and the designs for their projects. Which means, of course, that it's time for the collaborators to up the anty.
Read MoreWe're halfway done!
The highlights from today were:
- A new species of wooden marine life was discovered in the parking lot!
- A submarine got a floor and a roof and then flipped using human power!
- An octopus has 8 legs (not yet attached!)
- Young humans were able to use a bunch of new tools and new techniques: the jigsaw, the handsaw, how to make a jig, specialized cuts on the chopsaw, and of course, how to work and communicate better together as members of a building and problem-solving community.
Today, I mostly hung out with the octopus team, and helped them be silly and tinkery as they made huge progress on their project!
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Today was the launch of Tinkering School's first week at Mark Day School in San Rafael! For both students and staff, it was quite the experience. This is our first time launching a summer day camp that's primarily outdoors, with a mobile shop that can be tucked and untucked at the close and start of each day, and in a space where we aren't reliant on many of the things we come to depend on at our main day camp location in San Francisco -- there are no rafters from which to suspend projects, no endless supply chain of weird and unusual materials, and no walls.
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Wow everybody, we really really did it! We built one enormous in three parts--head, thorax and abdomen. We included grasshopper legs, a scorpion's stinger, dragonfly wings, pinchers, antennae, and some monkey bars for good measure.
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"Teamwork makes the dream work!" reminds Manny gently as kiddos leave the chopsaw room with their freshly cut pieces. And we've been seeing some great teamwork this week! From those precious partner pushes to working together to make the pinchers move more smoothly, our teamwork this week has come in all shapes and sizes.
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Things are moving right along, and moving around our space here at SF Day camp! Campers and collaborators are starting to be able to see how our Frankinsect is going to look when all the pieces come together, make some plans for how to get the head, thorax and abdomen connected, and make some plans for getting the moving parts moving.
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Welcome to Tinkering School Summer 2017! We could not have asked for a better first day of summer camp--after all of our training and prep in the weeks leading up to camp, we all get the jitters before day one. Today felt like we'd all already been together for weeks!
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Well, here it is. The end of August. We have had so many fun projects at Junior Day Camp this summer, from Dinosaurs to Poop Week and Space Week to Get Across the River! The time just flew by and we feel so lucky to have done so much collaborating, worked with so many great tinkerers, built BIG things, tried REALLY hard, and made so many excellent mistakes. Let's do it again next summer! Let the fall tinkering begin!
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What an intense building week at Junior Day Camp! We can hardly believe we made it to Friday!
The morning was our final building session and it was important for us all to GO SLOW. When we are running out of time to do things that we want to do, too often we will rush, make silly mistakes (the kind that maybe we should have ALREADY learned from), or even get hurt. We were mindful to slow down and focus on collaborating instead of finishing the project. In fact, we even talked about how finishing the projects is NOT one of our four Tinkering School goals!
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It turns out that it's really hard to cross an imaginary river. It's really hard to build a bridge and a train out of precut wood using teamwork and hardwork and lots of planning. We've spend the last two days making some big progress on these projects, despite that it's been really, really, hard!
Tomorrow, we wrap everything up and show it off in the afternoon, and I can't wait to see what happens!
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Today was silly. Here's how:
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