Tinker School: Engineering Camp

photo of Drilling at the Tinker School

NPR had a nice story on kids taking risks (a compliment our post from a couple days ago: Kids Need Adventurous Play) Camp Offers Kids A Chance To Play With Fire. Tinkering School gives kids a chance to make real things they use (boats, motorized bikes, bristle bots…). Their blog is awesome.

The Tinkering School offers an exploratory curriculum designed to help kids – ages 7 to 17 – learn how to build things. By providing a collaborative environment in which to explore basic and advanced building techniques and principles, we strive to create a school where we all learn by fooling around. All activities are hands-on, supervised, and at least partly improvisational.

Parents/guardians will be expected to complete the big scary liability waiver.

Tinkering School is taught primarily by me, Gever Tulley, aided of course by my indispensable wife Julie Spiegler and the inimitable Robyn Orr. By day, I am a Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe, writer, and practicing sculptor…

I started the Tinkering School because it’s the kind of thing I would like to have been able to go to myself.

I wish I could go. Related: National Underwater Robotics ChallengeScience Toys You Can Make With Your KidsLa Vida RobotTechnology and Fun in the Classroom

8 thoughts on “Tinker School: Engineering Camp

  1. Tunde

    Very interesting concept. If kids are not given an opportunity to fool around, they would end up taking those risks when there’s nobody there.
    My mum hasn’t got the slightest clue the dangerous things i did when i was young!

  2. Deb

    This is always a winner with science students. I was always the teacher in trouble with my “higher ups” for taking my class outside and into the woods for botany and biology. They always remembered and learned the material covered in those time periods.

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