ABSTRACT
Children are natural engineers. They tinker with the natural world and the designed world too: piling up sand or blocks to make dams and bridges; doodling wherever surfaces and media are available; taking things apart and putting them back together. They create forts out of blankets, cardboard, bushes, or wood. Their activities offer a foundation for future understandings: how technologies are designed, resourced, organized, and constructed; and how engineering affects people, society, and the environment. Children’s natural interests create opportunities for the development of initial understandings about technology and engineering, and building upon those initial understandings is now an educational priority (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 1993; National Research Council [NRC], 2012; Obama, 2009).
