TinkrLAB empowering kids to invent, build, make

OKEMOS - When Melissa Allen was 8 years old, she wanted a basketball hoop.

Her father took her to a garage sale where they found an old one, along with a backboard, for about $3.  

"My dad taught me how to refinish it, I sanded it down, I sanded down the rim," Allen said. "I repainted it, painted the design and learned how to put the brackets on. I learned how to hang it, and I had my basketball hoop.

"How much more cool was it for me to play with a basketball hoop that I made versus something they bought for me? My dad and I did it all together."

Allen says she has hundreds of stories like that, and she is using the skills honed alongside her dad to teach children in what she calls tinkrLAB.

TinkrLAB gives students an opportunity to take things apart, to build robots, to discover 3-D printing and to hack toys and make their own creations. It's inside Kids N Dogs, the pet store she opened with her husband, Christopher, in Meridian Mall in fall 2014.

That October, Allen pitched the concept at The Hatching, a monthly competition organized by LEAP, Spartan Innovations and The NEO Center, which gives local entrepreneurs a chance to take their ideas from the drawing board to production.

She won. It grew from there.

TinkrLAB now offers classes and parties. It holds Take Apart Tuesday, where kids come in, learn how to use tools and take things apart. They've taken apart couches, bicycles, tennis shoes, printers. Even a toilet.

"We bought a new one, let them take it apart, put it back together," Allen said. "They got to learn how to fix it, to see why you don’t shove toothbrushes or toys down toilets. That week, one of our little guys who had worked on the toilet, their toilet broke at home and he was so excited because he got to help his dad, because he knew how to fix a toilet."

They were learning skills they would not traditionally learn in school. It was a hit.

Allen's pet project is exposing girls to programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, often abbreviated as STEM.

There is a huge gender imbalance in STEM fields, Allen said. She wants to expose girls, from the age of 5 or 6 on, to the possibilities those fields hold.

"We want to show them that the word 'engineer' doesn’t necessarily mean you are sitting in a room on a computer designing a car, if that’s not what you want to do," she said. "The term 'engineer' can be a lot of different things."

Her father, Joe Rabideau, was a builder so Allen, an only child, learned to use tools and cook at a young age. (He's also the inventor of the Poochie Bowl, a two-in-one home and travel dog bowl, that was not incidental in her decision to open a pet store.)

"As an adult, when I realized, my gosh, these little girls, they're not using tools, they don’t know how to do any of this stuff, I was shocked," Allen said. "And it's not that they don’t want to, it's just lack of opportunity."

Which is why she and her husband decided to add kids products that are all about inventing, building and making to the mix in their store. When they decided to expand the kids side, customers asked about classes and workshops. Out of those requests came Take Apart Tuesday

"When my daughter Elspeth is in the tinkrLAB, building and creating, she likes that she can use tools and can create something else," said Courtney Stocker. "Recently she learned how to attach wires to make a motor run. She made a little mini robot and she thought that was pretty cool. She likes taking something apart to see how it works on the inside, but she also enjoys the creating and making it happen. I feel like it’s giving her a lot of independence."

Stocker, a reading specialist at Okemos Radmoor Montessori, has been taking Elspeth Genshaw, 7, to Take Apart Tuesdays since they started. Stocker also teaches some of the classes at the tinkrLAB.

Rabideau, who is retired, is helping develop new products and product lines. He also is looking at developing curriculum for some of the classes they teach and helping not just the kids who come in, but also adults, to learn the process of taking an idea all the way to market.

"When a kid finally clicks on to 'Gee, I can do this,' you watch the spark in their eyes as their minds start," Rabideau said. "During Take Apart Tuesdays, there are common parts for all these different items you take apart -— a drill, computer, a dialysis machine — and you see motors in each one of them, it's just 'Wow, I didn’t know there were motors in each one.'"

He can’t help but be excited.

"I look at them and can’t imagine where they will be in 20 years, from learning how to use a screwdriver and learning there are fans in these machines," Rabideau said. "It might spark something that will become a lifelong adventure for them."

And he says it's cool to see connections between parents and children, when they start to work on things together. Because that is what is missing today, he says.

"If the older generation is passing on to the new generation, it really keeps the story going and the knowledge growing," Rabideau said.

Allen is planning to place larger focus on tinkerLAB and to reduce the focus on Kids N Dogs concept, transitioning over time into solely tinkrLAB, with a small section of the store called Maker to Market for inventors who have made products, which will include some of the dog products.

"We really want to support that local inventor ingenuity entrepreneur person," Allen said. "If the kids make products, the kids can sell them in the store. So the kids are making money. What’s better than an 8-year-old making money from something they made?"

Contact Vickki Dozier at (517) 267-1342 or vdozier@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter@vickkiD.