Tinkering is a way of learning through hands-on activity -- experimenting with materials and devices to see how they work, taking things apart, making small changes and improvements, exploring and inventing. Tinkering may seem like a form of play -- and it is -- but it is also a powerful way of discovering truths about science, engineering, and math. With this book, Curt Gabrielson* follows up on his best-seller Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff with this all-new volume that features more than three dozen fun and educational tinkering projects based on his years of working with kids in the tropical island nation of Timor-Leste. Step-by-step instructions accompanied by full-color photos take you through a range of enjoyable projects that explore life sciences, physics, chemistry, earth sciences, and mathematics. You'll discover how math is used to make baskets, how fungi create fermentation, how electricity can make a magnet, how the greenhouse effect creates warming, and much more. The author also enlivens his latest batch of tinkering projects with colorful tales of his experiences in the tropic and the lives of the people he' s met there.

Inside you'll find:

Curt Gabrielson runs the Watsonville Environmental Science Workshop and works with science education in East Timor. He has been a science educator for more than 20 years, with positions in the California public schools, the National University of East Timor, and San Francisco’s Exploratorium Teacher Institute.