By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Little ones and their families were in for a creative treat as the Westwood Public Library (WPL) hosted the Playful Engineers. Throughout this event, everyone was able to conduct some hands-on, play-based STEAM powered learning using an array of different items.
As attendees gathered into the Community Room of the WPL, buckets of toys could be seen lining the room, including K’nex, Tinkertoys, Legos, Dominos (both wooden and regular), Race Cars, Race Car Tracks and more. The possibilities for creations were certainly endless, yet everyone was encouraged to try and make their very own Rube Goldberg machine.
Teaching Artist and Founder of Playful Engineers Jay Mankita, and Workshop Facilitator Merlin Katz, were seen headlining this event. As kids and adults started making their own models, these two were busy creating their machines that they would show as demonstrations.
About halfway through the event, Mankita and Katz were ready to show off their work. Mankita went on to address everyone, “Here is what’s going on here. This is a chain reaction where one thing happens makes another thing happen which makes another thing happen and so on. Sometimes nothing happens because there is a failure point. When we have failure points today, I want them to be spectacular failures. When I make a chain reaction I want it to work, but sometimes, things fail. Especially when I try things that I am not that good at. Things that I don't understand yet. But I keep on working at it because the more I work at it, the better I will get at doing it. We call that making progress. So all I am interested in today is making progress, not being perfect.”
He additionally mentioned that when he builds a chain reaction, he usually starts with how he wants it to end and then works his way backwards. This went on to be a helpful tip for everyone when it was time to go back to creating their own chain reactions.
Attendees sat in awe and lit up with pure joy as they watched both Mankita and Katz’s chain reactions. It definitely got everyone’s creative juices flowing as they continued to build their own types of machines. Many of the various creations included the cars starting the chain reactions, while others used things like dominos and building blocks.
This Playful Engineers event was a major success that left little ones eager to build more chain reactions at home. For more information about upcoming events like these happening at the WPL, please visit their website at www.westwoodlibrary.org.
