My proudest MakerBot Dad moment
Duplicating ducks
About two weeks ago I had taken my daughter to a friend’s house for a dinner party. 1 She played with some kind of little board game with plastic ducks that you fish out of a moving pond. On the way back home she asked about that game.
The best, the part that made me proud, was that she asked me about how she and I could print ducks so we could have a version of this game for ourselves. We discussed how I have red and yellow plastic, but not orange.2 How we would have to design the duck, print the duck in yellow, and then paint it with orange for the beak and legs.
I love that my daughter was thinking more about how something was constructed, how we could replicate or create a version of it, and about the material problems we would have to work around in order to create a toy for her. Arguably, she is really thinking about how to copy existing products rather than designing or inventing. However, I learned how to draw by copying art from comic books and how to write HTML by taking apart web pages and modifying them.
She could just as easily have asked me to buy the game for her or asked for it as a birthday or Christmas present. I would much rather she began thinking like an inventor or designer than merely a consumer.
How has your MakerBot changed how your kid sees toys?
- Photo courtesy of Man & Machine [↩]
- Yet… [↩]
| Tagged with | consumer, designer, duck, duck game, inventor, makerbot dad, plastic, plastic duck | 8 comments |
8 Comments so far
Owen
Yeah, every time I sit down at my desk at home, my 3 year old asks me to make him something. So there are a bunch of x wing fighters and toy spaceships.
I need to design something else to print for him….
MakerBlock
@Owen: Post some ideas! Maybe I can help design something!
Andy from Workshopshed
I’d make the bottom slightly out of thicker plastic so it is not top heavy.
Daniel
i was just thinking about ducks last week too…i have a bunch of rubber duckies at my desk at work and was going to scan them in. never got to it this weekend though.
Dave
Time for a MakerBlockette blog!
Nikolaus Gradwohl
my proudest makerbot-dad moment was when my 5 year old daughter told a friend: “my dad can print ANYTHING!”
bertram niessen
Hey, that’s a great story!
You’re right when you say that “She could just as easily have asked me to buy the game for her or asked for it as a birthday or Christmas present”; it shows the power of small things in terms of viewpoint shift on the world. Thanks.
Mitch
Well not a dad moment but brother moment. My little sister was over and I showed her my makerbot and told her it makes toys, she was excited. I let her pick out something from thingiverse and she picked the old stone house model and printed it. She had fun with after I cleaned it up a bit