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.

The post Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 7 appeared first on Kreolab.sk.

Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 2

Rastislav Geschwandtner — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:55:42 +0000

Note: Pavla and Ema helped Rasto to write today’s blog post. Their comments are in italics.

My eyes were still half closed and my breakfast unfinished when first kids arrived in the morning at 7:45. We had an excellent plan prepared for today. Our intention was to start with a new activity, but as soon as kids arrived they grabbed their cordless drills and started improving and modifying the chairs they made yesterday. They got so involved in it! It became clear to me that they just don’t have enough of practising the the skill they learned yesterday. OK, changing plans. Let’s go for the Plan B. Let’s drive some more screws.

After the terrible tsunami a group of unfortunate Quameaukirikis got trapped on a little island surrounded by water infested with sharks. They desperately need help. One of the options is to make some kind of a catapult by which we would be able to shoot some food packages to the island. But kids decided for the other option – to build a bridge. Well, obviously this is more permanent solution. A catapult would help only temporarily. I cannot but totally agree with them.

After my short introduction to the concept of closed triangles in bridge and crane structures children got to taking apart their beloved chairs. The thing is we will need a lot of material for the bridge. One group went to survey the disaster area (bottom end of the garden) and find out what would be the best place to build a bridge at. We discovered that the sea is the narrowest between the last elevated garden terrace and the lowest branch of the nearby walnut tree. We need to bridge a 4 metre distance.
[See image gallery at www.kreolab.sk]
See you again tomorrow.

The post Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 2 appeared first on Kreolab.sk.

pupils Archives - Kreolab.sk

Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 7

Tinkering School Bratislava 2012 – Day 2