About
Hi! I’m Rachelle (pronounced Raquel!), founder of TinkerLab. I’m passionate about developing creative & fun art activities that children and adults love – all in the spirit of exploration, experimentation, and play.
I’m a maker, mom, and author of three kids creativity books, TinkerLab: A Hands-on Guide for Little Inventors, TinkerLab Art Starts: 52 Projects for Open-ended Exploration, and Creative Adventures in Cursive.
I’m also the founder of TinkerLab Schoolhouse, the online kids creativity and art club, offering weekly art plans for families and teachers.
I’m delighted you’re here.
About Rachelle
I was raised in Los Angeles where the city and a backyard hill full of bees and fruit trees were my playground.
Inspired to make art my living, I studied costume design at UCLA, then traveled around the world to work on Hollywood films.
With a growing hunger to help kids connect to their creativity, I became a K-8 art teacher, pursued a master’s in art education at Harvard, then went on to teach art in schools and art museums.
TinkerLab emerged in 2010 as a fun creative project from making art with my own kids.
My goal is to uncover easy and meaningful ways to create art with kids so l can shorten the learning curve for you!
With children, art moves fluidly between disciplines. When kids create, learning pillars like science, drawing, or storytelling easily blur together, one thing becoming and relying on another. This understanding is the foundation TinkerLab is built on.
I live in Northern California with my husband, Scott, and two awesome kids who each create in their own unique and wonderful ways. You’ll see their hands and faces sprinkled through my blog. Fun fact! I’m also a Resident Fellow in a Stanford dorm, where I work with an amazing team of RAs to bring fun adventures to our 100+ frosh.
About TinkerLab
TinkerLab is a popular art and creativity website visited by thousands of readers each month. We’re followed by 300K+ visitors on social media.
We believe making art should be fun, easy, and meaningful. TinkerLab activities are:
- Fun for kids
- Child-led
- Open-ended
- Process-driven
- Tested by kids, over and over again
Makers enter our world at all levels of curiosity and expertise, and we believe everyone should feel comfortable creating.
TinkerLab has been featured in Real Simple magazine, Family Fun magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Americans for the Arts, Washington Post, Visual Thinking Strategies, PBS Parents, Apartment Therapy, ABC Bay Area Life, Kiwi Co, Baby Center, and Palo Alto Online.
USEFUL LINKS
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10 WAYS TO INTRODUCE ART TO PRESCHOOLERS
An inspiring 10-point poster for your fridge, planning binder, or to share with colleagues or friends.
TinkerLab acknowledges that we operate on ancestral Ohlone land. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and future. We recognize that this land holds profound historical, cultural, and ongoing significance for Ohlone people, and we are committed to understanding and honoring this relationship. As part of our commitment to meaningful acknowledgment, we make annual donations to support Ohlone communities.