I really love my third grade class, especially my teacher Ms. Harris. Ms. Harris has the most beautiful long brown hair that she likes to wear tied back into a low ponytail. Sometimes when I am daydreaming in class I wish I could braid it like I do my American Girl doll. I don’t know how old she is but I feel like she can’t be that old because she likes the same music as I do.
Ms. Harris says that her favorite subject to teach is science. (I love science too!) She spent last summer in a special workshop for teachers at the Academy of Science so that she could teach us even cooler, new stuff for science class. This afternoon, when we shuffled back from lunch into the classroom, I noticed a huge row of boxes lining the back of the room. Ms. Harris was arranging them as we were settling into our desks.
"Class, I have an exciting announcement!" declared Ms. Harris.
"We have a half day today?" Charlie blurted out.
"No," Ms. Harris replied, a bit annoyed at the interruption. "Something better! We are going to have a Tinkering Contest for the class. Do you guys know what tinkering is?"
I was squealing inside from the excitement. Did she say tinkering? I couldn’t believe we were about to tinker in class! I raised my hand to answer Ms. Harris.
"Yes, Chloe," said Ms. Harris as she pointed in my direction. "Please tell the class what tinkering is."
"Tinkering is all about experimenting, inventing and being creative with your ideas to make something," I said.
"Yes, that’s correct, Chloe," Ms. Harris said. I beamed, smiling and nodding to both Phoebe and Sabrina. "It’s also about being hands-on," Ms. Harris added. The best way to discover new ideas or inventions is working on things with your hands. Making something with your hands leads to learning. There’s also a bigger issue here too. The environment and sustainability which is what we will also focus on for this project."
"Sustaina-what?" Sabrina asked.
"Sustainability is about taking care of our environment and planet Earth," explained Ms. Harris. "We are going to focus on how we can reuse and recycle items to make something new, out of something old. This way we aren’t building up the landfills of our precious earth with all of our junk. In these boxes are old items, small boxes, containers, computer parts, nuts, bolts, jars, buttons, fabric and more. Each person in the class needs to take these old materials and create something new out of them. It can be whatever you want – let your imagination run wild!"
"This is due next week on Monday," continued Ms. Harris. "Each of you will present your tinkering project in class. We will vote at the end of the presentations to pick the winner. The winner of the Tinkering Contest will have their project displayed at The Tinkering Studio in the Exploratorium!"
"This is due next week on Monday," continued Ms. Harris. "Each of you will present your tinkering project in class. We will vote at the end of the presentations to pick the winner. The winner of the Tinkering Contest will have their project displayed at The Tinkering Studio in the Exploratorium!"
Ms. Harris gave us all a small bag and had us go to the back of the room to take out a few pieces that, in her words "called to us". If we liked them we could put them in the bag and take it back to our desks. Then she had us take out our notebooks to sketch ideas on what we could make with the pieces we had collected. She said we could go back to the boxes during sketching if we wanted to get more pieces for our concept.
I got up and took my bag to the back of the room. My mind was working in overdrive. I had so many ideas on what I could make that I didn’t really know what I would need. I grabbed a small pipe, a few plastic containers, some string, buttons, a wheel pulley, as well as a bunch of other random things that I felt I liked. I spent the afternoon sketching various ideas. I still wasn’t completely sure what I was going to make. Ms. Harris told us we could take the bag of recycled materials home to start working on the project. If we needed more bits, we could grab more from the boxes in class each day or use anything from home that was old.
When I got home, Lulu was waiting for me at the door. "Let’s go play!" Lulu exclaimed. "Not now Lulu, I have a big project I need to figure out."
"Oooh, a big project huh? Tell me all about it," said Lulu.
Read More in Chapter 4: Tinkering Binkering
