Wonderful Idea Co.

12/11/2024

Amazing to see The Tinkering Workshop featured on Tested as one of Jen's "favorite things" of 2024!

Jen shares the tools she used most for a big project this past summer, two maker books, and other awesome workshop finds. Milwaukee M18 18V Battery Mounts: h...

09/16/2024

There’s less than a month until the release of my new book, The Tinkering Workshop and you’re all invited to the book birthday party! On October 15th we’ll be broadcasting live at 3pm PST from the Changemaker Lab in San Francisco, a school makerspace featured in the pages as an inspiring tinkering environment!

Ryan will give a quick introduction and invite the team from Storey Publishing including photographer Hesh Hipp and designer Ian O’Neill to share about the behind-the-scenes process. We’ll have an interactive Q&A session with some spotlighted tinkerers who have contributed their explorations to the ‘going deeper’ pages. And there will be an informal chat with a and educators who will share how they might try the projects in their spaces.

Parents and caregivers with their kids, educators and tinkerers are all invited to take part in this free event, meet some inspiring makers and get inspired to play, build and explore with science, art and technology. Hope to see you there!

Get ready to celebrate the launch of The Tinkering Workshop with a fun online party full of creativity and DIY projects!

09/12/2024

Last week, we joined the inspiring educators and designers from Tinker Tank and Das Habitat Augsburg to create a giant collaborative machine with kids and adults who attended the exhibition at the Ars Electronica festival.

Our giant pop-up was full of woodworking tools, scrap parts, electronics workbenches and a wild variety of everyday materials. Each group built part of the machine and all of the parts got connected to create an incredible kinetic sculpture.

For me, it was the first time trying to incorporate large scale free-form elements constructed with participants to a chain reaction workshop. It was an amazing experience building ramps with power drills and wood pieces, setting up scrap tires scavenged from local parking lots and knocking down heavy wood towers. The festival stretched our muscles of facilitation and environmental design as we tried to figure out how to provide opportunities to people to follow their own pathways through the project. Some of the kids took ownership over the space and came back multiple times to keep adding to the machine. I’m working on an in-depth recap of the workshop on the blog, but as a sneak preview, I wanted to share a test run of one of the most epic stations!

07/17/2024

We're less than three months away from the release of my new book, The Tinkering Workshop which will be published by Storey Publishing on October 15th, 2024!

I created this book to inspire kids, parents, caregivers and educators to use everyday materials to explore their own ideas about art, science and technology. I’m hoping that it will be a great resource both for those already immersed in the maker world as well as those just getting started with tinkering.

Here’s a link with more information:
https://thetinkeringworkshop.com

I would really appreciate all of your help to spread the word about the upcoming book launch! If you are connected to a children's bookstore, library makerspace, homeschool network, museum gift shop or anywhere else that might be interested in featuring the book, I would really appreciate you sharing the details with your contacts. And if you have any questions or suggestions for ways to promote the book, please reach out by email. I’m happy to chat about possible events, promotions and connections in the larger making and tinkering community!

06/03/2024

As part of the lead up to the release of the new book "The Tinkering Workshop", we've put together a few personal reading lists on goodreads that contain some of recommendations and inspirations for building your own library at home, in a classroom or . I’ve divided the lists into books about tinkering projects, inspirations, books for educators/caregivers and children’s stories but of course, there are lots of overlap between the categories.

I hope you enjoy this "tinkering bibliography" and I would also love to know which other books or categories you would add! While you’re on , I would appreciate it if you added to your “want to read” list (as well as any other recommendations that inspire you). Happy reading and happy tinkering!

As part of the process of putting together my new book, The Tinkering Workshop , I spent a lot of time looking over the myriad books that have inspired me over the years and researching possible additions to the list of publications that spark new ideas. As part of the lead up to the release of

05/17/2024

Over the past few years, our head-tinkerer, Ryan Jenkins has been working on a giant project that we're so excited to finally share. This October, Storey Publishing will be releasing The Tinkering Workshop, a project book that will support kids and adults to get started messing about with everyday materials, build personally meaningful projects and explore ideas related to art, science and technology. Whether your tinkering station is a kitchen table, a corner of the library or a high-tech school makerspace, hopefully you will find new ideas and inspirations in the pages and have a lot of fun along the way.

Check out a new blog post with sample pages, behind the scenes photos and ways that you can get involved with the book launch. Stay tuned for more updates about this exciting release!

Over the past few years I’ve been working on a giant project that I’m so excited to finally reveal. This October, Storey Publishing (a division of Hachette Book Group) will be releasing my first book called The Tinkering Workshop . This book will support kids and adults to get started messing

09/09/2021

In just a few weeks we'll be launching the second season of A Tinkering World Tour. This is an online workshop where we spend five Wednesdays together from September 22nd to October 20th learning about making and tinkering around the world. In each session we'll get tours of local makerspaces, meet artists to hear about their creative process and try a tinkering activity together. You will get the chance to network, share your projects and discuss the essential elements of this style of teaching and learning.

The workshop will take place early on Wednesday mornings on the west coast of the USA, around lunch time on the east coast and in the evening in Europe. And if you are joining from Japan (we had a few people last session) it will be around midnight! If that day/time doesn't work for you, we're also offering the course MOOC-style which means that you will be able to watch the recordings of the calls on your own time and contribute to the online message board to interact with presenters and participants.

In each workshop we'll focus on a different city, region or country and get a taste of what makes tinkering special in that location. This season we'll be visiting Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Kathmandu (Nepal), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Mexicali (Mexico) as well as trying a special off-planet edition with the Tinkering School Mars Mission and other space-themed makerspaces and artists. Some of our guest presenters include Remida Reggio Emilia, Karkhana, FabLab Nepal, Raumschiff - Werkstatt für Astronomie, Gever Tulley, LILO.Zone, Stela Barbieri, Colectivo Tomate, El Garage Project Hub and more surprise tinkerers to be announced!

Our crowdfunding campaign closes in less than 48 hours, so if you want to join, now is the time to sign up!

To participate live in the workshop the fee is $99 (less that $20 per each 2 hour workshop) and for the MOOC-style participation it's just $25 to follow the entire journey. As well any extra contributions will help us to be able to continue to offer these types of programs especially during the pandemic period. If you could share with your networks in these final days we would really appreciate it!

We hope that you can join this exciting online workshop and be a part of this tinkering exploration! Here's the link to the sign up page:
https://igg.me/at/wicotinkeringtourtwo/x/26481680 #/

An online tinkering workshop where we travel the world and learn from makers, artists and educators! | Check out 'WICO presents A Tinkering World Tour: Season Two' on Indiegogo.

09/02/2021

on oct 20th the heads to mexico & we're excited to announce that Colectivo Tomate will be joining to share their community mural projects! sign up for the workshop today to learn more about this amazing multigenerational project https://igg.me/at/wicotinkeringtourtwo/x/26481680 #/

09/01/2021

Sign up for the WICO World Tour, a tinkering workshop experience that's inspiring, engaging and will give you the chance to network with other makers educators all over the world.

This round we'll visit Remida Reggio Emilia in Italy, Tinkering School in USA/Mars, Tomate in Mexico, LILO.Zone in Brazil, Karkhana in Nepal and many many more artists makers and educators. Where else can you pilot a mars rover, learn about 3D printing with pasta and build fantastic landscapes from vegetables?

Workshops take place live on zoom on Wednesdays around 8:00 PST //11:00 EST // 5:00 CEST. If those times don't work for you you can to sign up to get the videos and follow the course on your own time!

There's only about a week left of our Indiegogo campaign and we want more workshop participants! For the final days, you can register for live participation at a discounted rate. Sign up today and join us for this five-week course starting on September 22nd.

An online tinkering workshop where we travel the world and learn from makers, artists and educators! | Check out 'WICO presents A Tinkering World Tour: Season Two' on Indiegogo.

08/06/2021

We have about a month left to sign up for the all new super exciting 'Tinkering World Tour' online workshop! This is a great chance to virtually visit the world, learn from makers, artists and educators, and tour innovative spaces in five unique destinations!

Join live over zoom or as a MOOC-style participant and be apart of this exciting adventure!

https://igg.me/at/wicotinkeringtourtwo/x/26481680 #/

07/20/2021

Our new online WICO tinkering world tour course launches in september! Check out a video recap of 'season one' where we connected with artists and educators from ChezaCheza Dance Foundation, Playtronica, つくるまなぶ 京都町家科学館, Meow Wolf, En hemmelig klub and many many more!

Join us for 'season two' starting in september where we'll tinker with street art, science kits, scrap materials, science museums and even spaghetti!

An online tinkering workshop where we travel the world and learn from makers, artists and educators! | Check out 'WICO presents A Tinkering World Tour: Season Two' on Indiegogo.

07/16/2021

In this workshop with Ryan Jenkins, we will learn more about cardboard as a material that can be used to make prototypes in a simple and fun way.
The workshop is supported by Goethe-Institut Kairo

Date: Friday, July 16. Time: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
event and attendance is for

For more information: https://cairo.makerfaire.com/maker/entry/2891/
Register here: https://cairo.makerfaire.com/registration-form/

في الورشة دي مع ريان جنكيس، هنعرف اكتر عن الورق المقوى كمادة ممكن تستخدم في صنع نماذج أولية بشكل بسيط وبمراحل كلها مرح.
الورشة بدعم من معهد جوته بالقاهرة

يوم الجمعة 16 يوليو، من الساعة 7 مساءً وحتى الساعة 8 مساءً
الايفنت أونلاين والحضور مجاني

لمعلومات أكثر: https://cairo.makerfaire.com/maker/entry/2891/
للتسجيل: https://cairo.makerfaire.com/registration-form/