Use some recycled materials from around your house to create a moving mechanical sculpture that tells a story. We’ll be figuring out ways to tinker with what we have available at home and prototyping many different pathways to create your own automata.

Materials:

• 1 box/base for the automata (the bottom half of a milk carton, a small cardboard box (around 6″x6″), yogurt container (large), 2L plastic bottle)
• 2 axles (wooden skewer sticks, dowels, thick wire, pencils)
• 2-3 bushings (plastic straws or tubes that are a bit larger than the size of your axles)
• 3-4 cams (cardboard circles 1″ to 2″ diameter, plastic lids, wine corks, thick foam circles)
• assorted craft materials (feathers, googly eyes, colorful paper, thin cardboard from food packaging, pompoms) cutting tool (scissors or utility knife) and attaching tool (glue gun or tape)

Watch and comment LIVE on the Family Maker Camp Facebook page or on the Make: Youtube channel.

Ryan Jenkins is the co-founder and director of Wonderful Idea Co, a creative studio that explores art, science & technology through making and tinkering. He also works closely with Tinkering School to design camps/classes and he helps prototype hands-on workshops with the Cabaret Mechanical Theater in the UK.
wonderfulidea.co
Twitter: @wonderfulideaco and @ryanejenkins
Instagram: @wonderfulideaco