For two summers in 1979 and 1983, I went to go visit my Aunt Merideth and Uncle Joe. The first summer I spent waking up every morning at 5 in the morning and going out with Joe in his beat up pickup truck. He knew all the trash routes in Boston and we would get to them before the trash men would and get all the good broken stuff. He would fix everything up and take it to a flea market for the weekend and sell it off. That first summer we made some stuff together, a simple soap box (similar to the one in the stock image above) and a bike made from parts of lots of bikes. Joe did all the work, but he took the time to then have me do it over again so that I could learn how everything fit together. Then we painted it. He asked me what color would I like it? I said black.
It was a powerful time for me, I think that I was just there for a week, but I learned that complicated things came apart, could be fixed, put back together, and be sold.
The following year I returned, and things had changed. They had moved to the coast of Massachusets and were managing an apartment building. Most mornings, Joe and I would go pick up donuts and then go out to my Grandpa Wendell’s farm. Joe had set up a temporary workshop in the back and we spent our days fixing up a motorboat. Joe had bought it for $50 and it needed help. He was replacing big chunks of the hull with plywood and using fiberglass to seal it up. I left before seeing that thing work, but the lessons of being able to aquire broken things cheap and fix them up, were impressed upon me again.
I’m starting work on a book that will be projects for kids… you know, projects that kids can actually do and I’m thinking back to the early days of making stuff.
I feel confident that there will be sections about fixing up bikes and making a go cart and I’m looking forward to exploring other possibilities for young people to be able to get the bug to make things. Crafts and simple and challenging projects are all open game.
I want young people to feel that same empowerment I felt when I worked on projects.
What kinds of projects do you remember messing around with when you were a kid? I’d love to hear what you think should be in a children’s book about making things.
I played with the usual kid stuff — Legos, Tinker Toys, and Radio Shack 100-in-1 electronics kits — but my fondest memories are of just taking apart household stuff to see how it worked. I disassembled and reassembled an old movie camera we had laying around… and it still worked! How cool is that?!
Not sure what electronic stuff is as accessible as that these days. Maybe AA battery-driven clocks? Electronic toys & games? I’d probably wander the aisles at Goodwill to see what kinds of things are getting dumped.
When I read your post on Facebook, the first thing that came to my mind was “cooking”. Now, reading your blog post, I see you’re thinking about something else entirely.
I had Lego, and Tinker Toys, and even Lincoln Logs, but what I remember making the most went on in the kitchen. First helping my parents cook, and then later doing things on my own. Making challah for the family was something I was doing by my early teens and I was very proud of it.
There’s a gender issue here, I suspect…
My grandfather was a building superintendent in the Bronx, and the cast offs from the building yielded a vast trove of neat stuff to play with. We would build go-carts ( you call it a soap-box ) out of baby carriage wheels and 2×4s. I still remember finding a reel to reel tape recorder with a tape that played - we were convinced - the voices of martians. ( ends up we had it on the wrong tape speed )
Your book, like ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’ is needed. So much of childhood now is over-supervised. I had my own workbench in my parent’s basement, more kids need that today.
As for the complexity of electronics today, maybe some projects garnered from Hack A Day, teaching kids how to make new things out of broken things.
I took apart old radios, battery-operated toys, shavers, etc. I spent a lot of time playing with flashlight bulbs, motors, wires, and batteries. I loved that I could make the bulb light briefly without batteries by hooking it to a motor and spinning it by hand. If I were writing a book like the one you describe, I would definitely include a couple of electronics projects that can be built with salvaged parts. Probably one project that uses speakers somehow and one that uses motors (Make mag vibrobot?). Maybe even showing how to make an intercom by hooking batteries to two old telephone sets. I would have killed for such knowledge as a kid!
I would also include a rubber band powered airplane. The top of a foam egg carton makes a fantastic wing with a built-in pylon to lift the wing above a balsa motor stick. Using the propeller from a storebought plane after it gets broken, kids can make a plane that flies better than the storebought one ever did. If you want photos and more details about how to build such a plane, feel free to email me.
I can’t wait to see the book, Bre. You can bet I’ll buy a few copies for the kids in my life.
I think you should look for some different kinds of kites. I used to love flying things when I was young.
I once built ping pong ball cannons with my students. Our parts list included about 18″ of PVC pipe, a PVC end cap, a spring about 4″ long that stored energy when compressed, a few long plastic cable ties and a ping pong ball. The only tool we needed was a drill.
Total time to build is less than 2 hours. The kids were in 4th and 5th grade at the time.
When I was about 5 years old, my dad and I picked up a little workbench from a local school’s trash heap (they were dismantling the woodshop). We took it home, and he modified it by making it short enough for me, and putting a pegboard on the back, and a little shelf up top. What I then did was spend hours there, taking apart old phones, VCRs, whatever my allowance would let me buy at local yard sales. My fondest memories are of the few circuits out of Forrest M. Mimms’s classic “Getting Started in Electronics” that I was able to build by age 7.
Overall, I’d say that these days, especially with the advent of cheap programmables like the picaxe, which have a flowchart-based IDE, why not go for electronics?
Another fun thing was making toys, along with the earliest woodworking project I ever did, which was a key rack that my parents still use.
Do you remember when Dad would make Totem Poles when we lived in Ithaca? How wierd was that? Do you remember when we made that BMX bike and spaypainted that Neon green. Talk about an ugly bike that never got stolen….
Like most of the other respondents, I spent loads of time with legos, erector sets, and fixing broken things around the house(apart from my sister’s oft-broken toys, my first real repair was a a mechanical vaporizer when I was about 8). My favorite projects were model rockets: I got a box of parts..body tubes, balsa, engine mounts etc. and made my own designs, starting around 7-8 years old.. not all were successful, but they were all fun to launch.. (and sometimes dangerous.).. I would suggest you include water bottle rockets in your book.. they’re easy to make with just duct tape, a couple of old soda bottles, and either a tire stem or the more efficient PVC launcher. I sometimes slap one of these together and launch it while I’m grilling on our deck and have 7 minutes to waste between turning the steaks.
there is a neat exhibit for children at the children’s museum in pittsburgh called “how people make things” http://www.pittsburghkids.org/Templates/CMP_ExhibitsDetail.aspx?CID=887&SECID=2&MENUID=303
the exhibit lets kids learn about how things are made in industrial settings while letting them engage int he process themselves. the site also has a kids “diy” section
Great Project! I wish you well!
Two thoughts popped into my head after reading your post…
Go-Karts! When I was maybe 10-ish it seemed the whole neighborhood got involved with Go-Karts. No motors, no electronics, just pieces of scrap wood, with 4 wheels and a chair (you had to have a friend push you to go). My Dad and Grandfather pitched in and “helped” (they did most of the work) me put together one of the best go-karts ever. I got to paint it Yellow and Red! Good times.
I also remember wanting to start an “electronics repair business” with my friend. We went around to neighbors asking if they had any old junk pieces they needed fixing. (We had no idea what we were doing, we just wanted to take stuff apart). We ended up getting an old Toaster. We took it back to the basement, took it apart, figured out how it worked, and put it back together again, and it worked! We felt like geniuses! I would emphasize the importance of just taking stuff apart to see how it works.
Keep us posted so we can pre-order on amazon
When I was maybe 5? 6? I tried to build a helicopter with pieces of lathe. Not a small model - I was determined to fly. I knew if I could find a strong enough rubber band, I could pull it off. I could never figure it out. Please include a section on building a working helicopter.
Also, it would be super if your book were gender-neutral. I’m a little geeky and I have geeky girl friends, and a lot of the fun stuff is written as if only boys would be doing the projects.
When I was a kid, we had some of the series, “The Family Creative Workshop.” Twenty-four volumes, oversized and hardbound. I loved them because they made making things so accessible, and promoted the “make things out of stuff lying around” ethic that was so big in the 1970s. Of course, most of the stuff I made was crap. I hope your book distinguishes between art, cool stuff, and crap!
The things I remember loving the most: making beads, carving, macrame, and making paints and dyes. [Girly-girl low tech - it was the seventies!] But the best thing I took away from those books was the idea that if I wanted or needed something, there was a way to make something I had or could easily obtain fill that niche.
Wow, great responses! Thanks for the guidance!
My grandfather let me help him put together motor scooter made up of junk he found lying around. My parents bought me a chemistry set as a kid, and my dad showed me where to buy the chemicals that weren’t included. He also taught me to make smoke bombs and explosives, but this was way back when it wasn’t a big deal. This was fun for me because as a girl, they wouldn’t get me legos (I don’t know why bombs weren’t considered unfeminine). Your book idea is a good one and if it’s a bit gender neutral–I’d buy it for my nieces and nephews.
i love the idea tell me when you make it
i love the idea me still beaing a kid and all lol when do you think it would come out?
My son is 8 year old and love to make things, I like to make things, I wanted to find some books for him and found your site. Do you have an book to recommand for him? Thank you!
hey im 12 and i would want too buy it i want too makea lit gocart with like a 6.0 hp or somthing lol my mom got mad bc i i got 2 big garbige wheels i made her bring me too all junk yards but i did not no they were for cars so i got an old go car(1 seater) and engin waz gone so i took it off and got my lit push lawn mower engine and i did not the right stuff bc i did not have a welding machine bc my dad died when i waz four bye