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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 12

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:44:41 +0000

Well, here it is. The very last day of this year’s Tinkering School Bratislava. We have done two weeks of projects, designing, building and tinkering. Kids have a single day left during which they should finish the Time Machine project from yeasterday’s Day 11.

Kids woke up at about six thirty. When I woke up a little later girls were all excited to tell me that after I fell asleep last night they lit their torches and played cards. Mathias from the neighbouring tent joined them too. So that’s why there was so much giggling and whispering coming from their tent last night. Being my daugter, Pavla knew that I’d quickly fall asleep and they were scheming. Well, I’m curious to see how well will they do with the drills today when they stayed up late last night. Teresa had to wake up and leave even earlier because she is playing soccer for a team and they have a match abroad today. Well, today we will have to do without Teresa and Richard.

[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]

The last day of this year’s Tinkering School Bratislava is over. These were two fantastic weeks that we will long keep in our memories. Kids were fantastic and it was a pleasure working with them. To summarise my feelings and findings and to draw any plans for the future, I’ll allow my self a little bit of time to let the whole think sink in a bit. After that I’ll write one more concluding blog post.

But before that, thank you for following us a keeping your fingers crossed for us. Your every positive feedback encouraged us and gave us strength. Good buy at some other interesting project.

Rasto, Jana and Pavla Geschwandtner

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 11

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:56:35 +0000

Kids arrived for Day 11 of the Tinkering School packed more than usually. Tents, pads, sleeping bags, … Yes, tonight we are not going home. We have a sleepover. We are going to do some tinkering during the day, have a picknick in the evening, play with lights at night and then sleep in tents in the garden.

We left our project unfinished yesterday. The table football is nearly completed, but there are some bits and pieces here and there that needs to be done. First we need to attach handles at the ends of threaded bars. Last night, the grandpa threaded the holes in the handles for us so that we can screw rather then glue them on.

[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]

It’s 11 PM, so it’s time to pack everything, wash and go to sleep. Richard was picked by his father and taken home. The rest of us are going to search for a comfortable spot in our tents. Wind is picking up a bit and there seam to be some lightning far in the distance, but it looks like we are going to have a hot night. After half an hour everything is silent, save for a quiet giggling coming from the girls’ tent. Tomorrow is the last day of this year’s Tinkering School. Will we manage to build the time machine? Will it work. I’m falling a sleep.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 10

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 21:43:31 +0000

I’m happy to announce that we have survived our yesterday’s camping a today we successfully finished this year’s Tinkering School Bratislava. All the tinkerers have survived and they are back in the beds tonight. However, we are a few days behind with our blog so I owe you the report for the past three days. We continued without Daniel who, unfortunately, got sick. Ok. let’s go.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
For more about the derby of the season FC Debarked vs. FC Barked and about how we were visited by angels at night read our tomorrow’s blog post. There are two more days and one more night full of tinkering ahead of us. Stay well spirited and tuned.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 9

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 21:14:01 +0000

For Wednesday, Day 9 of Tinkering School Bratislava, we invited a kind guest – young Slovak designer Juraj Vyboh, known also under his artistic name Repa. Juraj is a truly remarkable artist renown for his unique lamps and other furniture made of waste and recycled materials. I came across Juraj’s work the first time three years ago when we were preparing the very first TEDxBratislava 2010. At that time he made a stage design and a large futuristic lighting fixture suspended above the stage. Juraj kindly agreed to come and show kids how beautiful things can be made of ordinary recycled plastic bottles. When I was inviting him I had no idea how fantastic will Juraj turn out to be with kids .

[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
Juraj, thank you so much for your visit and your super creative ideas. Kids really enjoyed your visit and your recycled art.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 8

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:40:35 +0000

There was another extremely hot day ahead of us today. We offered kids to choose from two projects in the morning. They all excitedly agreed to go the woods today with the ambition of building a suspended bridge out of my old rock climbing rope, sticks and some twine. However, as many times before, the the things turned out very differently.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
Follow us also tomorrow and have a fabulous day.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 7

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:22:45 +0000

Here we come again with Session Two and a new children. Well, save from Pavla who is staying for this session too.
After short looking around and a short talk about our rules we head-jumped to our first project. After our last week’s fantastic experience with chair building from strips of plywood and wooden blocks we decided to repeat the project this week as well. We will make do with cordless drills, one-size screws and the precut material. Cordless drills are fantastic tools and children just love them.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
We saw once again that chair building from plywood and blocks of wood is a marvellous activity for kids. A chair can be anything from a single strip of plywood supported by two wooden blocks as legs to elaborate royal thrones with all kinds of bells and whistles. With this activity children are simply doomed to success. The process is fun from start to finish and the outcome is never the same but always surprising. Matt and Adam are a living proof that a suitable light-weight cordless drill (our lightest one weighs just 1 kg) can be efficiently handled even by 7 year olds. The activity is also a great starter for more challenging stuff where team work is required.
See you again tomorrow.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 6

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:27:31 +0000

Note: Pavla helped me with writing the blog post today. Her comments are in italics.

I cannot imagine a better weather for camping. After a hot summer night spent in the tents in our garden we woke up to a beautiful morning. I have no idea at what time the kids woke up. All I know is that when the grandma went to buy fresh groceries at 6 AM, she heard kids playing and fooling around. (I had a great night’s sleep because I didn’t have to write a blog 🙂 Really, who wood sleep when roosters are crowing and you can jump out of your sleeping bag and go fooling around in the net.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
Session One of Tinkering School Bratislava is over. We all had a great time over the past week. I believe that kids are leaving with having a better idea of how things work and what’s hidden under plastic covers of the appliances. I hope that they are also taking away an experience that they are able to tackle even problems that sometimes may seem to be incredibly hard or impossible.

For children, they have a few more days of the summer holiday left. And for us, there is a short one day break and then a new group of kids on Monday. Most of them are a little bit older. We have plan, but as always, we will let ourselves drift on the tides of imagination, wishes and needs of the children. One or two projects may be similar, but we will definitely do some new things as well. Follow us to see how we are doing.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 5

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 21:51:29 +0000

There is a long day ahead of us. Kids are not going home at 5 PM like usually, but rather staying for an evening camp fire picnic and then adventurous sleeping in tents. The weather forecast is favourable – the night is supposed to be hot, so I hope everything goes well… But let’s keep the storytelling in order, shall we?
The kids came this morning all packed for our today’s overnight stay. The bags with tents were just too tempting for kids it to leave them packed. And they wouldn’t by tinkerers if they couldn’t build their own tent.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
There is another challenging day ahead of us tomorrow. The last one in this session. And after a one day break, six more days with another group of children.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 4

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:10:57 +0000

This morning we had a dilemma which project to chose for today, because we had prepared more projects we could possibly do in a week. Eventually we decided to use the long hazelnut tree sticks kids brought from the forest yesterday and we will lash them together to create a shelter.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
Well, parents are here, so we are forced to pack everything and leave it for tomorrow.
We have an overnight stay at Tinkering School tomorrow. We will put up tents and tinker whole day and even after it gets dark. Since I’ll probably not be able to write a blog tomorrow, you can read all about our Friday’s adventures in two days. Talk to you then.

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Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 3

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:42:48 +0000

After two days spent in the backyard we set on a trip to the woods with knifes in our pockets. Originally, we wanted to get kids some practice in using pocket knives and lash a structure made of hazelnut branches, but the events had a different twist to them once again 😉
Jana stayed home to cook lunch and in stead of her the grandpa joined as as a forest guide. He knew of a place with an abundance of young hazelnut trees. While I helped kids to find and collect some suitable sized sticks, the grandpa was teaching them some basics of whittling.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
We had kind of relaxing day today. Let’s see what we will embark on tomorrow.

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