Some thank you notes, tinkering, and The Amazing Dr B.

Thank you notes.

I need to say thank you to a few people first off, because since the new year three people have added me to their blog award lists. Thank you to all three of you, and sorry for being so tardy in saying my thank you too!

• Thank you "Obsessively Stitiching".


• Thank you Lexi from "Pink and Orange Coffee".


• Thank you Wonder Mom, from "The Fantastic Five". (Shamefully, this was so many weeks ago that I can't even find the post with the award in it to link to)

Now seems like a good time to link to some lovely crafty people, that have given some of the projects on this blog a go and blogged about how it went for them. If you do try out the projects that I put on this blog and want to share them with us, then please do add a comment to this post, because hearing that others are giving this stuff a go with their kids is a huge encouragement to keep blogging and I'm sure gives other readers more encouragement to try these projects too.

• Kami from "Nurturing the Tender Years" tried out our balloon and torch lightsaber project and posted about it here.


• Melissa from "Darwin and Melissa" also tried the balloon and torch light saber project. You can find her post about it here.


• You can find a photo of Shadygrove's version of our Playdough Dinosaur Island here.


• Dongdong from "The adventures of J and Prime" blogged about her kids making our heart necklaces from toilet roll tubes here.


• More lovely toilet roll tube heart necklaces from "Singing Three Little Birds" here.

Tinkering.

I need to pass on some posetive blog karma, so in case any of you reading happen to be in the vicinity of Austin, I'm pointing you towards one of the blogs I really like, called "Get You Mess On". It's written by Kami, and she's got a great attitude and enthusiasm for kids getting involved and elbow deep in making stuff themselves.

Kami has been working with Gever Tulley (of Tinkering School, which I have blogged about before here) and others in her area to organise events in Austin at the end of this month promoting Gever's new book "Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)", plus talks, a book signing, a documentary screening, and a special day long tinkering school experience for fifteen kids. To find out more about this event, visit her post on it here.

The Amazing Dr B.

Lastly, I want to share with you a project that I got to work on with my partener in crime, Dr Boardman. He's been fangling with electronics and microcontroller programming for about a year now and is really getting to grips with creating toys for the kids. This latest one I got to design and paint up the display case for. It's called "The Amazing Dr Boardman's Color Conundrum"

One ping pong ball lights up a random colour (RGB led), and your job is to use the three dials to control Red, Green and Blue values to match the second ping pong ball's colour. When you get it spot on, both lights flash. I guess it's a good way to explain mixing light colour rather than paint colour (additive vs subtractive colour mixing). My kids may be a bit young to get that aspect of the game's purpose just yet, but they are enjoying playing with it none the less and think it's very cool that Dad mad it for them. I'm trying to persuade him to collaborate on making a set of various little carnival themed electronic games now.

To find out exactly how Dr B made and programmed the inards, pop over to his blog Fangletronics for a full description. If my five year old's crepe paper rose tutorial gave you a giggle, then you might enjoy the demonstration of the Color Conundrum that she was in charge of videoing too. I think she's going to have a future in making documentaries or something, because we can't get the camera away from her!