How making started for me

My children and I were part of a cooperative play based preschool where the parents worked one day a week.  Once a year each parent was expected to provide snacks for the week as well as make homemade play dough for the group.  At La Playa Cooperative Nursery School there were no lessons.  The children were free to move from station to station throughout the day.  They went from the pretend play loft, to the cubes, to the sandbox.  They could draw, use the play dough and run around with the working parents and preschool teachers supervising and guiding, but never “teaching”.  There were guideposts - circle time, snack time, and a book read at the end - but otherwise the children could do what interested them most for the remainder of that time.

Once my children entered formal elementary school, I wanted that spirit of unstructured play to continue in our home.  I had found the blog, SouleMama, as well as her book and magazine and really found that you could extend that open ended play by making things.  I already knew how to sew and crochet, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it was “making”.  As my son moved on to Legos and “made” many creations I found books that had crafts that we could do together.

I also hadn’t realized that cooking was “making”.  I had trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena, CA and the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, Ireland, so I knew how to cook and bake.  I had made my own baby food and when my daughter was born, I’d have my son help me make baby food for her while she was napping.  He really enjoyed pressing the button on the Cuisinart!

We found Adam Savage videos and my son dove head first into Rube Goldberg machines (I don’t know how many times I’ve watched OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass).  As time went on we discovered the Maker Movement.  We went to Bricks by the Bay and ultimately the Maker Faire in San Francisco.

This is all to say that in our family making is just part of the fabric of our life and we want to share the confidence that comes from knowing you can make (and fix) the world around you.