Tinkering Station for Young Engineers

I’m excited to share one of the recent book adventures we had with Jill over at Confidence Meets Parenting… We’ve fallen in love with a book called Rosie Revere, Engineer and set up a Tinkering Station to go along with it. It’s an inspiring story about a smart little girl who likes to tinker with trash and make amazing contraptions. But her inventions don’t always work quite right so she gets frustrated. That is until a very special family member takes her aside and teaches her that failure is the first step in inventing something spectacular. For a fun way to help build confidence in kids (and build young engineers!), follow these simple steps to tinkering fun.

Tinkering Station Supplies

• nuts and bolts
• hole punch
• tape
• rubber bands
• old chop sticks
• recycled cardboard
• recycled bottles
• ruler
• twine
• leftover wheels from a broken toy
• journal
• pen / markers

Let the Tinkering Begin

She literally sat down at the station, opened the pen, and started drawing her contraption. She said ok, I’m going to build a car, but I should draw it first. Then she tinkered and built a “car”. Then she drew it out again, post-build. This mama engineer was so proud of her little engineer for working through a design process all on her own!

Talk About Tinkering

Tinkering open play is a great chance to talk with your kiddo about trial and error and failure. Experimenting helps kids develop logic skills, important for daily life, not just engineering. Some good open-ended questions to ask:

• What did you design?
• How does it work?
• What parts were harder than you expected to design / draw / build / make ?
• Does this look and work like what you thought it would when you started? Why or why not?
• What would you do differently next time?

Every kid can be an engineer, it just takes trying! As Rosie’s Aunt Rose said, “The only true failure comes if you quit.” 🙂

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