by Barb Noren, Lead Tinkering Facilitator, reDiscover Center There are a few different modes of building that I’ve observed: tinkering, prototyping, and making. These modes are flexible and overlapping, but have different intentions, benefits, and challenges. Tinkering is experimentation; often open-ended, without an end goal. You may reach one, but pure tinkering doesn’t have explicit...
Month: March 2017
The Tinkering Toolkit
Updated March 2017 Originally posted on November 3, 2014 on https://paperstatic.com/tinkering-and-prototyping-materials/ There are a few different modes of building that I’ve observed: tinkering, prototyping, and making. These modes are flexible and overlapping, but have different intentions, benefits, and challenges. Tinkering is experimentation; often open-ended, without an end goal. You may reach one, but pure tinkering...
Links for Ideas and Inspiration
Exploratorium The Exploratorium in San Francisco is a kids' STEAM museum with a tinkering lab tucked away inside, and they produce tons of entertaining, inspiring, educational content, like websites, activities, and even apps. Instructables A website where anyone can post tutorials for tool tips and specific projects. Make Magazine Whether you have a subscription or not, there...
Tinkering @ Home #2: Get Your Kids Involved Early
by Barb Noren, Lead Tinkering Facilitator, reDiscover Center Young minds have a distinct advantage: their minds are flexible in a way that adult minds aren’t. They have great capacity for imagining wild combinations, they’re open to learning new things (it is their full-time job, after all), and they are capable of extremely inventive solutions. With...
Tinkering Prompt Generator
Stuck trying to come up with tinkering ideas? Use the lists below as a tinkering prompt generator! Take a word from the first list (Modes of Tinkering) and pair it with a word from the second list (Topics for Tinkering) to start you on your way! Examples: Origami + Underwater = an aquarium full of...
Rosie Revere is an Engineer. But is she a tinkerer?
Andrea Beaty’s Rosie Revere, Engineer is a beloved modern classic children’s book. Rosie is a kid who never stops inventing fantastical machines, such as python-repelling cheese hats. Through the course of the story she overcomes failures, embarrassment, and fear, with a little encouragement from her great-great-aunt Rose, a WWII Rosie the Riveter. It’s a great...
ReDiscover Yourself: Making a 3D Selfie
Part of the magic of reDiscover Center is that you never know exactly what materials might be waiting for you to explore! Facilitator Caitlin Dobbin found an empty coffee canister, tongue depressor, bottle caps, beads, yarn, lanyard, twine, burlap, straws, film negatives, moveable sign letters, puzzle pieces, metal clips and cardboard rings and, with some...
Tinkering@Home
What exactly is tinkering? A question we often get asked at reDiscover Center. Our response? Tinkering is more than just making things. It?s experimenting, letting your creativity loose, letting yourself fail and learning from the experience. Tinkering is a way of expanding your mind and your conceptions about what can be done, and more importantly,...