Last week, after one month of preparations, the Nerdy Derby track from MicroLab and Eindhoven Maker faire was setup at my son’s primary school ’t Karregat.

I find it difficult to describe the feeling and energy that was released when almost 400 kids participated with their self-made cars in the races. It was amazing 🙂

An important part of the preparation was an instruction morning with all the teachers.
Led by Jorg Duitsman the teachers experienced firsthand what to expect when building Nerdy Derby cars. To create some positive competitiveness between the teachers we planned the teachers-race as the main event of the Race day; the big final with all the children present!
Of course there was also the matter of sawing almost 500 pieces of plywood (aka the chassis), ordering 2000 plastic wheels and 2000 rubber rings (aka: the tires), finding the right size nail and collection as much junk stuff (aka car decoration).
Top tipL All kids want to have a race number on their car. So do like me and buy every available Rummy game at your local second hand stores. (I managed 5 games for less than 5 euro each 🙂 )

15 school classes, ranging from group 1 (4 year olds) to group 8 (12 year olds) started building their cars on the first  Monday after the holidays, 1 hour per day until Race Day on Friday. The idea behind it was to have a “racing” start after the holidays, full of positive energy and creativity.

I’ve never seen so much creativity and ingenuity packed in a single piece of plywood and a set of wheels.

I manage to photograph all the creations inside a specially prepared photo-booth.

I can’t emphasize enough how easy (and low-tech) it is to teach children and their teachers to be creative, to be expressive and to learn some technology along the way!

It can be done on every school; no excuse.

But let’s not end on such a preachy note.
At the end of the day, the Ouder Vereniging (parents association) of ’t Karregat, the teachers and all the children and their parents, just had a lot of fun and an explosion of creativity.

(due to privacy requests of parents, I can’t show pictures of the races)

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