Tinker Toys
My friends at The Tech gave us a huge canister of tinker toys as a
fitting bon voyage gift (for those of you who don’t know, tinker toys
(and specifically the plastic ones) have been the foundation material
for doing many of our design challenges (the open-ended activities we
do with museum visitors, teachers in professional development
workshops, and students in Bay Area classrooms), plus getting to build
with them brings out the kid in everyone).
Plus the canister is big enough for Sam to crawl into when he gets to that fun stage.
Thanks to my friends at The Tech for the toys, collection of
memerobilia from years gone by, and for 6 1/2 years of inspired
collaboration and fun (what "work" should be :-).
ps. after doing this initial "user study" and videoing it, I added another yellow connector piece to the other end of the orange stick so Sam wouldn’t jam it in his mouth.