Tinkering Tuesday: Food Truck Frenzy

As the year has progressed, I have created Tinkering Tuesday, a spin off of Maker Monday, yet geared toward our four and five year old makers. I tailor our maker activities to make them accessible to younger learners while also allowing more time for exploration and creativity. Maker Monday is in 25 minute time slots whereas Tinkering Tuesday is 50 minutes. As entrepreneurship is becoming more commonplace in education at the elementary and middle school levels, students are discovering their inner entrepreneurial spirits. Nurturing this spirit opens the door for so many creative learning opportunities.

I love the Food Truck Mindset that John Spencer uses to discuss innovation in schools. I appreciate his description of how food truck owners have to learn to empathize with the communities in which they are serving to be most successful. This idea created a springboard for a recent Tinkering Tuesday. 

I am constantly looking for ways to tie in our faith-based values into the special programs that our media department offers. Empathy is a central component to being a mensch, or a righteous person. When we take the time to work toward understanding others, we are instilling menschkeleit values. This is similar to the food truck approach: seeking to understand a community grows our level of empathy. On Tinkering Tuesday, I used the Food Truck Mindset to make this connection with students launching their own food truck business.

Students had a buffet line of items to consider in developing their food truck business: menu items, a list of necessary supplies, coupons to create, flyers to advertise the food truck, a catchy food truck design, and then finally the ability to make the food truck itself as a paper toy.

Buffet of Items to Consider for Creation of Food Truck Business

Business Card Design

Menu Items

                                                                   

Food Truck Designs

There was so much for the students to take into consideration throughout this process. First, who is the intended audience and therefore, what type of food should be served? Where will the ingredients come from: local farmers (another way to support the community) or will ingredients be outsourced from larger suppliers? How will the business be advertised most effectively? How will it be set apart from pre-existing restaurants? What will make the menu unique and yet, appealing? What is the best way to formulate a list of the supplies that will be needed in the food truck (list making is an important curation skill)? What designs will catch the community's attention? Setting a goal and walking through the steps to achieve that goal proved to be a worthwhile accomplishment. 

Whether it is Maker Monday or Tinkering Tuesday, I have discovered that students love activities that allow them to take home their creations. Our youngest makers call these "take aways". Students value take aways so that they can show off their work. In this activity, students took home their food trucks as well as the accompanying materials. While not every project involves a physical take away, I love that the process, just as much as the product, generates a take away.