GOT the energy as well as talent? Perhaps it’s time to use your time and talent in the right direction; that is if you really like to make stuff, create all kinds of art, learn about the world around and experiment with everything from electronics to baking and beekeeping, this and much more at www.DIY.org.

But before you start, you’ll need your parents’ approval to get registered on this skill-building website. After that you can go through the various categories of skills and challenges and choose the one you want to learn. There you’ll find a short list of materials to have on hand. In most cases, you will need an adult’s help to hand you materials and space for projects and supervise your progress.

The website has loads of interesting skills, from science to arts and from building to exploring each category with various challenges in it. For instance, there are skills that involve the outdoors (gardener, entomologist, forager), and others focus on the indoors (baker, front-end developer, stitcher). Some encourage problem-solving (industrial designer, mechanical engineer), and some are just for fun (dancer, prankster, sound effects wizard).

You can start with small or a big challenge; and if you want, you can upload your project by posting a picture or video of a completed challenge with step-by-step guidance for others to know how you did it. The basic idea of the site is that you have to complete three challenges in a particular area and then you earn that ‘skill’ and get a badge on your page. Every week new skills are added to the website and the number keeps growing.

DIY encourages a creative approach to solving problems, but there are certain tasks that require specific steps for safety reasons and also parental guidance; for instance, in harvesting honey (beekeeper) or using a soldering iron (circuit bender) on your own! However, before starting a challenge, kids should check out the posts by other DIY-ers who have solved such challenges. n

So kids, level up your skills, meet likeminded friends, and just be awesome at www.diy.org