Playful Engineers: Artful Mechanisms

Jay Mankita

For 30 years, Jay Mankita worked with kids and families as a touring songwriter, guitarist, performing artist, and workshop leader. In 2012, Jay uncovered a new passion for engineering and making things move, when he and his then 4 year old son Mojo saw a fantastic Rube Goldberg Machine shared by a friend. Jay and Mojo went into the playroom together, and after 11 years, Jay is still in there building and teaching – chain reactions, mechanical automata, and all sorts of artful mechanisms, within a play-based learning framework. Since 2015, Jay has presented over a thousand workshops and events at schools, libraries, camps, and fairs, making things move, and helping grow the next generations of makers. Jay also enjoys being a dad, swimming, hiking, dancing, guitar and piano, ping-pong, tetherball, tahini, chocolate, and sauerkraut, though not all at the same time.