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My son took a class over winter break at Leonardo's Basement and brought back a catapult with a 3-foot-long arm. Ever since then, he has been begging to go back.
During the class, he also made a weapon out of PVC pipe wrapped in sections of foam and a hockey stick made from wood screwed together and wrapped with duct tape. The hockey stick even lasted a couple of sessions on the ice.
Leonardo's Basement is as close as it gets to heaven for kids with an engineering bent or kids who just like to build things. The nonprofit organization was started by a group of parents whose children attended Barton Open School in South Minneapolis and who got together for informal science projects. They saw the potential for an ongoing program in which kids could create with minimal adult direction. They offered their first class in 1999.
Today, the organization runs family classes, summer camps and afterschool programs for children ages 6 to 16 out of the basement of a Minneapolis coffee shop on Nicollet Avenue. This summer, it will start offering programs at a second location in leased space at Griggs Recreation Center in the Hamline Midway neighborhood of St. Paul.
The philosophy is simple: Give kids a lot of supplies, some powerful tools and get out of the way.
"Adults are here to help them, not direct them. And that's an enormous difference from the way most formal learning environments operate," said founder and executive director Steve Jevning.
My
"They have pretty much everything you need here," said my son, staring around as if it were a candy shop.
We passed kids making paper boomerangs and a boy playing a dilapidated piano that was missing a panel, so you could see the hammer action inside as the keys were pressed. And there was a kid sitting in a control booth, loaded with rows of buttons, including a few that made lights turn on.
Cutting And Drilling / My son decided to make an airplane first, and in true Leonardo's Basement fashion, we were not handed a kit. We were given a long section of lightweight wood and some airplane parts to trace and cut.
I haven't let my son use a retractable utility knife before, so I winced as I watched him start to slice.
"Watch out for your fingers!" I gasped. I gave him an impromptu
Kids at Leonardo's Basement are invited to use hot-glue guns, cordless drills and hand saws without instruction. I asked Jevning if anyone had ever gotten a cut that required stitches.
"Never," he said. "We don't get serious cuts. We get a lot of nips and pokes. Somehow, young people can avoid making the kinds of stupid mistakes I make when I'm using sharp tools. What I do is I don't pay attention. Kids don't do that. They're not sawing with one hand and blowing their nose with the other and watching the kid across the room who is blowing up a helium balloon. They're really focused."
Jevning said kids also learn from their mistakes when they're allowed to try things on their own.
"If they're drilling backward with the drill, we let them be frustrated a little bit and then maybe another kid will show them how to do it differently," he said. "Or they'll ask for help. We know if we let them experience a little bit of failure, they're going to remember the better way to do it."
I had to admit, my son was pretty careful as he sawed away. When he hit a rough spot, someone was there to help, a high school senior named Ian Jentz, one of several dozen teachers and assistants Leonardo's Basement hires to run classes.
"You know what helps a lot is if you do a lot of very light cuts," Jentz told my son, as we struggled to cut through a piece of thicker wood for the fuselage using a utility knife. "Start at the top and keep making soft little cuts, and eventually it will go through."
Repairing And Launching / Next to us, Jim Ramlet of Golden Valley and his 7-year-old son, Joe, were repairing a fuselage that had split.
As Joe trotted off to rummage through boxes for rubber bands, Ramlet explained the allure of Leonardo's Basement.
"The kids love it. They can come in here and no one says, 'No, don't touch that!' " said Ramlet, who first visited on a family day arranged for Medtronic employees. "It's pretty much open season, and what kid wouldn't want that?
"I have no idea if this will work," he added, nodding to the plane, now held together with rubber bands. "It might fly only once, like Orville and Wilbur."
My son's plane ended up flying a few yards before doing a nosedive. Then, he wanted to head outside to test it, and we encountered an even more exciting project. Thirty kids and adults were clustered on the sidewalk shooting off rockets made out of water and pop bottles.
We watched a kid lock his bottle rocket, half full of water, neck down, into a homemade launcher. He used a bicycle pump to build up 60 pounds of pressure in the bottle and then he released the lock. His bottle sailed into the air as high as the treetops.
"I want to make a rocket," my son said, his eyes still riveted on the falling bottle, decorated with black feathers and blue foam fins.
We went back inside and my son made a rocket. He waited in line for his turn and then launched it as the crowd shouted, "Three! Two! One!" It sailed into the blue sky, spraying water as it flipped over and over. It even cleared the electrical wires.
Maja Beckstrom can be reached at 651-228-5295.
THE SCOOP
What: Leonardo's Basement
Where: 4301 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis and 1188 Hubbard Ave., St. Paul
Information: 612-824-4394, leonardosbasement.org
Cost: Ranges from free open houses to weeklong summer classes for $165
Target audience: Kids who like to build and make things
Crowd pleaser: Using hot-glue guns and power tools without a grownup
Avoid: Giving your child directions
Tip: Watch for family classes at the new St. Paul location.
Special Events: Classes over the summer include sessions such as "Catapults, Trebuchets and Other Siege Engines," "Design and Build a BMX Freestyle Trail," "Duck, Duck, Duct Tape," "Fantabulous Wooden Furniture," "Faerie Houses," "Raiders of the Lost Junkyard," "Go Carts," and "Water Bottle Rockets"
More: Read previously published family outings under "family fun" at MinnMoms.com.
