We’ve created an activity guide on prototyping transportation vessels! This project was inspired by Rosie Revere, Engineer, written by Andrea Beaty, and illustrated by David Roberts. Rosie Revere, Engineer is a story of a young girl who dreams of becoming an engineer. We can all take a lesson from Rosie to realize that dreams,...
Category: Tinkering@Home
Make a Plastic Bottle Soaker
We’ve created an activity guide on making a fun, recycled Super-Soaker to get you through the heat this summer! This project was inspired by Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions, written by Chris Barton and illustrated by Don Tate. This book is full of engaging images as we journey with Lonnie from learning...
Make a Sensory Enhancing Gadget
We’ve created an activity guide on making a gadget to help your senses! This project was inspired by Ada Twist Scientist, written by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts. Ada Twist is like many young tinkerers we know: inventive, resilient, and very, very curious. She may get herself into trouble sometimes, from drawing...
Tinkering @ Home #3: The Tinkering Toolkit
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...
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....
Tinkering@Home #1
The Whats and Whys of Tinkering at Home What exactly is tinkering? 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, what you...