reDiscover's Tinkering Toolkit
Flexible Tools and Materials for Practical Making at Home!
Whether there’s a school project that you need to make, a backpack that needs repairing, or some fabulous things kicking around your brain that you want to show to others in real life, our Tinkering Toolkit is the perfect platform for creating from home. They’re packed with useful tools and kid-sized safety equipment to support high-level making, prototyping, and functional resourcefulness using cardboard and other recyclables. Collect reused materials from your home, and you’re all set to create an amazing variety of sustainable projects, drawing from art, engineering, math, and design.
Buy One/Give One! Each purchase of a Tinkering Toolkit funds the distribution of a Tinkering Toolkit to a low income youth participating in reDiscover Center programs or at our network of LA-area schools.
Are you part of a Title I school in Los Angeles County? Grant funded classroom sets of Tinkering Toolkits are available for qualifying schools. Contact tinkering@rediscovercenter.org for more information.
What’s in the Tinkering Toolkit
Tinkering Toolkit has all of our favorite tools and a starter pack of materials that can be used in a ton of different ways. This kit includes tool safety sheets and activity guides to get your started.
We’ve included our very favorites for:
- Safety equipment: kid-sized gloves and safety glasses
- Cardboard tools: Canary cutter, screwdriver for punching holes
- Connections: Hot glue gun and extra hot glue sticks, school glue, glue stick, masking tape, brass fasteners
- Wireworking/heavy duty wrangling: Pliers, diagonal wire cutters, sandpaper
- Materials from our Creative Reuse Warehouse, such as bamboo skewers, wire, pencils, fabric scraps, buttons, and more
- Safety instructions for all of the included tools
Tinkering Toolkit – $49.95
Teachers
Purchase a set of our Tinkering Toolkits for your students, aged 8+, to use at home or in socially distanced classrooms. With tools specially chosen for flexibility and safety, creative reuse materials from our warehouse to spark imagination, and a booklet to get you started, this compact kit is the launchpad students need for hands-on projects at home with recycled materials. In addition to our Online Resources (which includes video, activities, and guides), we also provide live or online training for students and teachers on safe and effective use of the contents of these kits. Minimum order: 20 Tinkering Toolkits.
- Tinkering Toolkit – $50 per kit
- Tinkering Basics Kit – $30 per kit
- Cardboard Tinkering Kit – $20 per kit
- Connections Kit – $20 per kit
- Wire Working Kit – $20 per kit
Bulk pricing available, Add onto your field trip or class curriculum! Contact us via our booking request form to order today.
Title I Schools: Inquire about grant-funded Tinkering Toolkits.
If you already have a start, want to gather some of the elements yourself, or just want to keep things simple, this is the kit for you. We include several of our not-so-common tools, a bunch of useful connectors, and a bunch of materials from our creative reuse warehouse. This kit includes tool safety sheets and some activity guides to get your started.
We've included our very favorites for:
- Safety equipment: kid-sized safety glasses
- Cardboard tools: Canary cutter, screwdriver for punching holes
- Connections: School glue, glue stick, masking tape, brass fasteners
- Wireworking/heavy duty wrangling: Pliers, diagonal wire cutters, sandpaper
- Materials from our Creative Reuse Warehouse, such as bamboo skewers, wire, pencils and fabric scraps, buttons, and more
- Safety instructions for all of the included tools
It's time to dive into a pile of cardboard boxes and start turning it into a castle, dollhouse, robot, car, bookshelf... anything you like! You may have tried cutting cardboard with scissors before (so tough!), or a utility knife (so sharp!), but don't worry, we've got you covered. We've been doing cardboard programs centered around the Canary cutter for years. It's by far the best option we've found for flexible and easy manipulation of heavy materials like cardboard. This kit will get you the basics you need to start building!
We've included our very favorites for:
- Cardboard tools: Canary cutter, screwdriver for punching holes
- Connections: School glue, masking tape, brass fasteners
- A starter pack of materials from our Creative Reuse Warehouse
- Safety instructions for all of the included tools
Wire is fun and useful, but it can be difficult to manipulate it unless you are a robot with metal hands. On the off chance that you're not a robot, this kit will help you bend, twist, and cut all kinds of wires to any shape you like. We've also included the safety glasses that we've found the most comfortable for kiddos, since bits of wire can sometimes go flying and you'll want to protect your eyes. Again, in case you aren't a robot.
We've included our very favorites for:
- Safety equipment: Kid-sized safety glasses
- Wireworking/heavy duty wrangling: Pliers, diagonal wire cutters
- Materials from our Creative Reuse Warehouse: wire, corks
- Safety instructions for included tools
It can be a sticky situation when you want to put things together. There are different methods that work well in different situations. This kit includes a hot glue gun and comfortable kid-sized gloves to protect your digits. It also has brass fasteners so you can make a mechanical connection without glue.
We've included our very favorites for:
Safety equipment: Kid-sized gloves- Connections: Hot glue gun and extra hot glue sticks, brass fasteners
- A starter pack of materials from our Creative Reuse Warehouse
- Safety instructions for included tools
Need to restock some of the extra fun materials that we've gathered over the years? We will pack up some of our favorites and pass it right along to you!