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Every year we hear about how school budgets are getting cut or money meant for public schools is being diverted to private school vouchers (I'll hold my opinion as this is not a political blog.) Or maybe a private school is trying to save money. If funding drops something needs to get cut. Usually the first thing on the chopping block are the so called "enrichment" classes, Music, PE or Art. Some teachers, parents or administrators believe these classes are unnecessary and th

Why Tinkering Is the Best STEAM Teacher This story is a bit of family lore. A legend, if you will... It's the 1950s. My grandfather, Ed coming home from work. As he is walking into the living room he spies a... concerning scene. My mother Linda, a child herself at the time is sitting on the carport of their house surrounded by parts... of the brand new television the family had just gotten. Linda froze. To his credit, Ed didn't freak out. He surveyed the situation and calmly

Picture this: You are in the kitchen cooking dinner. Your child is there with you and isn't interested in tonight's "science" lesson (see last week's blog.. :) ) Your kid starts drumming on the table. First softly, then loader as they get into it. After a minute you turn to tell them to stop... but you don't. You stop and listen. Tour child isn't just drumming randomly. They've found a pattern in the drumming. They've found a RHYTHM! Instead of stopping them you hand them a p

I remember watching Good Eats on the Food Network. Even more than the food and Alton Brown's banter I loved the SCIENCE of it. My nerdy little brain was fascinated by learning about the physics and the chemistry. To this day, when I make pancake batter I stir for 10 seconds and then "walk away. Just... walk away." Today, many parents worry about getting their kids into science and math. Meanwhile the kitchen is literally one of the best science labs you can have and most sle

Picture the scene: a young inventor, goggles slightly askew, leans over their latest contraption with a notebook in one hand and a look of fierce concentration on their face. A lever is thrown. Gears grind. Steam hisses from a pipe that definitely wasn't meant to hiss. There's a spectacular shower of sparks — and then… nothing. The machine does not do what it was supposed to do. Now here's the question that matters: what happens next? If the answer is the young inventor laugh

By Finnigan Cogwheel, Head Tinkerer at Cogwheel Workshops Right now, in whatever room you're sitting in, there are dozens of engineering marvels going completely unnoticed. A zipper. A ballpoint pen. A refrigerator hum. We walk past extraordinary things every single day without blinking — and that, my friends, is a wonderful problem to fix. Here at Cogwheel Workshops, we believe one of the most powerful things we can do for a curious young mind is help them see what was alwa

It saddens me that more elementary schools (at least in my district) don't have STEM classes. In my opinion elementary school is the perfect time to introduce kids to STEAM subjects. Especially in the third grade through fifth grade window. Aside from the aspects that I touched on in my last post there are a few specific reasons why I think kids 7-11 is really the sweet spot for STEAM education. Most people would agree that elementary school is where it starts for kids. The

A lot of people hear the term STEM and automatically think they have a good handle on what it is. This is partially the fault of STEM teachers and the popular media. They give the idea that STEM is just Computer Science, maybe engineering. However STEM is much more than that and kids who learn STEM skills are learning so much more. Here are some of the skills kids learn in STEM classes. Confidence Last year, a fellow teacher and I began helping students participate in an eve

Curiosity doesn’t disappear overnight — it slowly dims when kids stop feeling safe to ask “what if?” At Cogwheel, we see again and again that children are naturally inventive when given time, space, and permission to explore. The good news? You don’t need a lab, a 3D printer, or a background in engineering to nurture that curiosity at home. Here are five simple STEAM projects you can try with children ages 7–11 using everyday materials. Each one invites experimentation, crea

When I was a kid I wanted to know EVERYTHING! Especially when it came to machines. I was fascinated by cars, engines, motors. If it was mechanical, I was hooked. The same went for science, especially space, and dinosaurs. It's why I am the person I am today. My friends were the same way. Maybe not about the same things but they were still interested in how things worked. The longer I've been teaching though the more I'm encountering a disturbing trend. Curiosity is dwindling

Finnigan Cogwheel What a year it's been! 2025 for me has been eventful on many fronts and has been full of challenges and triumphs, joy and sadness. I guess it's like that for everyone, each in different amounts. But as the year winds down I wanted to reflect on some of the things we have accomplished at the Workshop this year. We got the workshop up and running! We started making and crafting. Finally getting ideas out of our head, onto paper, and off the paper into the wo