Tinkering, or hands-on open-ended play with materials, fosters a ‘maker mindset’ in young kids. Providing opportunities to freely explore, build, and experiment allows children to think and act like engineers. While structured building toys teach principles, loose parts with no prescribed outcome fires up the imagination and problem-solving skills.

The Benefits of Tinkering

• Problem-solving – Tinkering encourages trial-and-error thinking. Kids learn to continually test solutions, iterate on ideas, and persist through challenges. This resilient mindset is key to innovation.
• Creativity – Lack of instructions pushes kids to envision novel uses for materials. This promotes flexibility, resourcefulness, and out-of-the-box thinking.
• Confidence – Successfully creating something boosts a sense of empowerment and self-efficacy. Kids gain confidence in their ability to make things work.
• Curiosity – Hands-on building satisfies innate curiosity about how things fit together. Tinkering sparks more questions and deeper exploration.
• Collaboration – Sharing materials and building together teaches communication, cooperation, and focusing on a common goal.

Make Tinkering Inviting

Provide a wide variety of household items like cardboard tubes, gears, funnels, strings, pulleys, tools, and hardware. Rotate materials to keep it fresh.

Allow plenty of space for spreading out project parts and making a mess during the creative process!

Ask open-ended questions but let kids direct the experience based on their own ideas, not yours.

Highlight their creations, ingenuity, and perseverance rather than focusing on the end product.

A regular maker time develops problem-solving, grit, innovation, and design skills.

A regular maker time develops problem-solving, grit, innovation and design skills. Children who tinker grow into flexible thinkers and confident creators primed for future academic and career success across STEAM fields. The maker mindset blossoms when kids drive their own hands-on creative play.