When my daughters were born, I realized that young children are amazingly adept at tinkering, if only they have the right conditions and tools. I also realized that the world is often not set up for small people, and most tools are not made for little hands. For the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with adapting tools and materials to accommodate young children, and I’ve learned that workbenches need to be lower, tools need to be smaller and lighter, and switches and connections need to be less fiddly, among other lessons. It turns out, making those simple adjustments can empower young children to go deep into their play with some pretty interesting investigations. I believe that there is a real need for more open-ended, creative exploration and learning experiences for young children. That is why I’m working on developing a series of tinkering projects and tools for really young kids (ages 3 to 5) in collaboration with friends and colleagues near and far.
My goal is to develop and test out one idea each month. I’m dusting off some old ideas and trying out some new ones, all with young kids in mind. Ideally, each idea that I try will be playful, open-ended, sensory, and social, use familiar materials in surprising ways, and be understandable, with visible parts and predictable, observable behaviors. At the end of each month, I will test out the current idea with the preschoolers at Dandelion Cooperative Preschool in Berkeley, and write about what we tried and what I learned.
I am going to make any ideas that I try freely available to anyone who wants to try them out, hoping to widen the circle of discovery and experimentation.