One rainy day, after watching a few too many episodes of  the Amazon show “Annedroids” , Myla said, “I want to build something!  I want to be an inventor.  Hey mom, can we build stuff out of other stuff, too?”

Not one to turn down an awesomely creative educational opportunity, I asked her what she wanted to build.

“ROBOTS!” she exclaimed. “We can even make one that helps with chores, and does the dishes.  Maybe even one that talks to us and plays Legos.  Can we make one that cleans?”

Um.  Well, since I don’t happen to have earned a degree in robotics and engineering, I was stalled out.  Until I remembered this:

One year while visiting my parents, my nieces decided to take apart some old electronics and build stuff.  They just took it all apart and hot-glued it all together.  Because that’s the kind of awesome stuff they do.  One of them came up with this one, and sent it to us–it’s a portrait of Myla painting!

Isn’t it AWESOME?  The curly hair!  The eyes!  The “paints,” and even the little collaboration taped to the easel.

I offered that as a suggestion, and Myla jumped at it.  We dug around the garage for some old electronics, but since I had recently donated or dumped most of them, a trip to the thrift store yielded a good harvest:  $5 for an old broken cassette player and a video tape rewinder.   The height of technology at the time, they now served a much more artistic purpose by yielding parts for our creations.

The cool thing was getting her familiar with some tools, which is a good skill for any kid to have.  I unscrewed the main body of the pieces, and taught her a little about wire clippers and screwdrivers.  This all involved a lot of work on my part, but it kept her busy and interested, just trying to figure out the tools and tiny pieces.  (Plus she looks super cool in her dad’s sunglasses, which doubled as eye protection, since I didn’t have any kid-goggles.)

A big bowl came in handy to keep all the little parts in for later.  That would be where we’d keep all the tiny pieces and what we could dig through to build more out of later, and she got a kick out of seeing all the little pieces inside.

I plugged in our trusty low-temp kid’s glue gun–those are the ones that heat at lower temps to make it a little easier for kids to use.  Still, since she had a bad experience with it ages ago (she directly touched the hot glue), she was hesitant to use it.  Instead, I let her tell me what went where, and I helped her glue.  I showed her, too, how the glue dries VERY quickly, and as long as you don’t touch it right away, it’s pretty harmless.

I just remember being warned so often about the dangers of power tools (my grandad cut the tip of his thumb off once, and I’ve heard tons of Wood Shop horror stories) that I have to fight through my fear of them sometimes.  I’d rather teach her the right way to use them, than just have her be afraid.

So here’s what we created!  A remote control cat, and a tiny gear robo-mouse!  So what if they can’t move on their own.  They were fun to make, and we had a great time building them!

This is the first little face I made as a quick example to show her how you can make things out of the junk parts…

Later, I was inspired by an Instagram artist who fixed his friend’s Ever After doll by building her a steampunk leg–and I realized I could use some of the broken electronics to make a prosthetic arm for a Monster High doll that Myla had acquired, whose arm was missing.

I had some tiny watch parts from a jewelry project I had in my craft supplies, and just hot-glued a little hook-arm together for her.

Anyway, it’s a rainy day again today.  Maybe we’ll have to be inventors again.  Ah, sciencing!  It’s the best!