ENGINEERING

Value of Tinkering

Children love to tinker or fiddle with materials. Why is this important? Children are trying to figure out how something works by actually experiencing the material. They are exploring, experimenting, and testing to discover the material's properties. When children tinker with water and dirt, they are exploring the how much water and dirt to put to create the correct consistency to make the mud do what they want it to do. If they want a lava flow, they need a more "watery" consistency verses mud to make a volcano. Understanding the properties of a material gives children an understanding of how the material works. And once that is learned, then children can manipulate the material and make it do what we want with it...use it in creative ways.

Children learn to use blocks to create cities, tall towers, or even processes.

Projects

The TRUTH is that play seems to be one of the most advance methods nature has invented to allow a complex brain to create itself.

- Dr. Stuart Brown (Contemporary American Psychologist)