Guest post by Casey Federico
Now that our dining room table is everyone’s work/school/life desk, we share more than ever before. One of the pleasures of working with the Tinkering Studio, is that my daughters - currently six and nine - get to look over my shoulder and engage with my work everyday. Last week my six-year-old noticed this video as I was searching the website:
“Mama, we can make that! We have those wooden things!” I thought she meant chopsticks, but once she had a chance to grab materials from our wall of materials, she chose tiny clothespins.
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I immediately thought of our experience with the STEAM Starters pilot sites where clothespins were a favorite light play material! My daughter and I got together to try out some connections between the clothespins and LEGO. Here was the process we liked best:
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Tape is my daughter’s usual tool of choice, but it didn’t make a strong connection, and blocked the LEGO connections. So we used a low heat hot glue gun.
Because our clothespins were so mini, the connection worked best on LEGO tiles with flat ends.
Once covered with glue, we added the clothespin.
The first thing she added her connectors to were paper cut-outs as a way of labeling each floor of “la casa de Violet” - an evolving LEGO creation.
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Other clothespins held “flames.” These flames are protecting a sleeping hero (and her hanging wardrobe).
After a few days of play with the new clothespin connectors, the girls added wire and string to the clothespins, and created a few ziplines, like this one:
The nine-year-old made her own adaptations, adding clothespins to Technic pieces, as well. Here is one with a winding yarn addition:
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Eager to see how these connectors keep evolving in our LEGO play!
