a pom-pom fountain

Last time I visited Dandelion preschool, I brought along a machine that I made for the kids to play with. It was inspired by the Jelly Belly Factory and the artist Norm Tuck’s confetti fountain, and it is very silly.

Preschoolers love sensory bins, and Dandelion has one that they keep filled with a rotating assortment of interesting stuff, like rainbow-colored rice, coffee beans, ice, gloop, and pom-poms. The kids love scooping the stuff up and pouring it out, which made me think they might like to play in a fountain that was scooping and pouring and moving the stuff around.

I decided to try using pom-poms, because they are soft and colorful and friendly (although I would still love to make one that uses gloop). I just had to find a way to move the pom-poms around to make it into a fountain.

My first idea was to make an archimedes spiral to lift the pom-poms. I tried making one out of PVC with the help of a tutorial by Mr. Construction, but mine was a mess! I tried again, crocheting it this time, which was better, but I still had trouble getting it to move the pom-poms.

I decided to try a different approach, and I made a motor-driven vertical conveyor belt out of rope and teaspoons, tin cans and toy tea cups that could scoop up the pom-poms and pour them out at the top. Fingers crossed, I set the whole contraption in a bin full of pom-poms and set it spinning.

my first attempt at a pom-pom fountain

It worked, and I started expanding, adding a ramp and a second bin to create more spaces for exploration.

I polished it up a bit, and took it to Dandelion for the big test. I also added a second ramp (made from an old gutter that the kids use as a ball and tiny car track) to catch the occasional stray pom-pom and create another space to play.

all set up, waiting for the kids to try it out

little alligators

Circuit boards are one of my favorite tools for tinkering, but the alligator wires that connect the boards are really finicky and hard for little hands to use. Makey Makey came up with a hack using clothespins and conductive tape that is pretty ingenious, and works for bigger kids. Clothespins are tricky for preschoolers, though, and I knew there had to be another way!

While trying to wrangle my toddler’s hair out of her face, I realized the answer was right in front of me. Toddler hair clips look an awful lot like alligator leads, but they’re a lot easier to open. I soldered on some wires and epoxied buttons to the clips to make them easier to get a grip on, and the toddler-friendly alligator leads were ready to test.

Like most preschoolers, my three year old loves making up stories, so the alligator clips are naturally alligators, and the buttons are fancy hats. With a little help, she discovered that if she pushed on the alligators fancy hat, their mouth opened, and then they could bite onto one of the nails on the circuit boards. To help her figure out how to connect the alligator wires, I showed her how to arrange the circuit boards into a circle, with a motor and a battery pack. I also borrowed a song that a lot of preschools use to gather the kids for story time, and we sang “come and make a circle, it’s circuit time now”. We made circuits together a few times, and soon she was able to experiment on her own. She tried out lots of different motors and toy mechanisms, and these little alligator clips enabled her to be in charge of her experimentation. You can see in the video below that she is able to use them without any help, which was amazing.

I am trying these little alligator clips out with a larger group of preschoolers later this week. I’m curious to find out if they work for other kids, and if they do I can’t wait to see what explorations they facilitate.

Tinkering with preschoolers

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.