CURIOSITY, CREATIVITY & FUN!

Get ready to tinker with screws, wood scraps, wire, and plastic piping and make your own creative contraptions. These projects help you explore the principles of science, engineering, electronics, and more. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination!

Gather some basic tools and supplies from a hardware store, garage, basement, woodshop, or recycling bin. Now get ready to tinker, explore, and engineer with screws, bendy wire, metal washers, plastic pipes, dowels, electronics, LED lights, and more! Makerspace educator Ryan Jenkins inspires kids to look at familiar supplies in new and unexpected ways, to think with their hands, troubleshoot tricky constructions, and sharpen their problem-solving skills. Kids are invited to imagine how to use the supplies on hand with projects, such as building Flexible Forts with cardboard and screws, making Art Robots with hobby motors, constructing a Water Factory with plastic pipes, balancing Sky Trams on strings, and engineering Surprising Switches with wire and foil. As they build, they’ll learn about balance, centre of gravity, comparative measuring, electricity, and more. Jump-start hours of curiosity and creativity. Start with a string, PVC pipe, cardboard ramp, or flexible tube-and see where it leads!

“Play, invent, and explore in new ways!”

– MIKE PETRICH, co-author of The Art of Tinkering and director of the Informal Learning Center at the Exploratorium

“A must-have addition to any makerspace or kitchen table… a fun and empowering way to introduce kids to the joys of real science and engineering!”

– SYLVIA LIBOW MARTINEZ, co-author of Invent to Learn

“Kids become makers and learn they can do almost anything.”

– DALE DOUGHERTY, creator of Make: Magazine and Maker Faire

“Cultivates creative, innovative thinking to solve real-world challenges.”

-CATE HEROMAN, early childhood consultant and author of Making and Tinkering with STEM

RYAN JENKINS is the cofounder of Wonderful Idea Co., a design studio focusing on STEAM education. He’s a former tinkerer and educator at the Exploratorium and Tinkering School and has prototyped projects at Maker Faires, science museums, libraries, and schools around the world. He is the Lead Facilitator of CMT’s online course, the Automata Tinkering Global Workshop.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Storey (14 Nov. 2024)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 168 pages
ISBN : ‎ 978-1635868098
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 8 – 12 years
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21.72 x 1.1 x 27.56 cm