WICO@Home - Four Ideas for Tinkering at Home

This week I experimented with my first online and remote spring break camp with a group of 8-10 students from SF School with a series of tinkering activities that could be done with everyday household materials.

I thought about what projects to introduce by using the low threshold, wide walls and high ceiling design principles developed by Seymour Papert, Mitchell Resnick and collaborators. This criteria is even more crucial for creating experiences for distance making/tinkering for several reasons.

For one, without in-person facilitation projects need to have a easy starting point that gives the learners an idea of where to go next. Additionally, if each kid can develop their own personal pathway through the activity, they will be more likely to be motivated to engage deeply. And finally, one positive aspect of these online sessions is that the young tinkerers can keep working on their own after the official session so having high ceilings and inspiring examples allows for kids to take ideas to new levels.

For this week of sessions, we explored cardboard construction, inflatables, dissections and chain reaction. As I was planning the sessions, I got inspiration from so many guides and instructables around the web and I wanted to share some links to PDFs and videos so you can try some of these things as well at home or with your students.

Cardboard Construction

Cardboard is such a plentiful and creative material. There are really endless possibilities for how you can build and tinker with cardboard but here are a few favorite resources.

Adafruit Cardboard Fundamentals

Moving Toys Workshop

Maker Camp - Make Cardboard Masks

Imagination Foundation Cardboard challenge

And in terms of high ceiling examples for artists and makers, we’re inspired by Cardboard Institute of Technology (CIT) for making immersive environments, Caine’s Arcade for playful carnival games, and Ana Serrano for telling colorful stories with the material.

Inflatable Friends

Inflatables was a brand new exploration for me but I was inspired by the posts from the Tech Interactive to give it a try. Like cardboard, most people have a lot of old plastic shopping/garbage/compost/dog poop bags around their houses an these can be used to make playful sculptures.

Tech Interactive DIY Inflatables

Oakland Toy Lab Bag Monsters

For this activity we were inspired by the artist work of Joshua Allen Harris “air bears”, the self-inflating sculptures of Shih Chieh Huang and the plastic bag mandalas from Virginia Fleck.

Electronics Dissection

There’s something so empowering about opening up a broken electronic device or electro-mechanical toy. With a couple little safety checks (we tend to stay away from plug-in devices and show kids how to discharge capacitors) these take-apart projects can provide an endless source of fascination.

Tinkering Studio Toy Take Apart

WICO Toy Dissection Field Guide

Agency by Design Take Apart Prompts

A nice guide for families from Colleen Graves

Safely Take Apart Technology

And in terms of inspiration both for what to take apart and what to do with the pieces we love the work of Todd Mclellan.

Chain Reaction

And of course as our friends in the Tinkering Studio have proved over the past few weeks, chain reaction may be the most flexible tinkering activity that people can do in the comfort of their home with whatever they have around them. Just take a look at the #RoundtheWorld_ChainReaction posts on twitter and you’ll see what I mean.

WICO Chain Reaction Guide

Tinkering Studio Chain Reaction

Instructable for special parts

Adding in MaKey MaKey

And of course the youtube inspirations for chain reactions are endless. A couple favorites are OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass and the collection of Joseph’s Machines.