Gizmo-cda was filled with the energy of excited, busy kids this week as they prepared for "Kinetic Fest."

Tools banged and buzzed as the young builders worked on human-powered vehicles for the festival that will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 12 at Riverstone.

One vehicle in particular, the largest project, is a human-powered tricycle made from old bike parts and irrigation wheels. Two of the youngsters working on the project, Cameron Craigie and Hayden Cooper, thought the vehicle was great but had different opinions about driving it.

"I hope I get to drive it," Craigie said as he described what they were doing with the trike. "We started on Monday - we got the wheels and then put all the braces in and now we are attaching the bicycle."

Cooper was worried it might be a little unstable with the large steel wheels, but said they did bend the spokes on the wheels to make the trike more stable.

"I think it's pretty cool," Cooper said. "When I first came into this I thought we were going to be doing robots and programming and stuff, but it was still fun anyway because I got to build and do a lot of hands-on stuff."

Some of the kids were building smaller, individual vehicles from old bikes and other parts, and sitting outside in front of Gizmo-cda was a couch they had put wheels and pedals on so they could drive it around as well.

"Anything can be turned into a vehicle," said Barbara Pleason Mueller, executive director of Gizmo-cda. "Disney has a word - they call it 'imagineering' - that is what we are doing here."

The Kinetic Fest will be a mix of entertainment with a parade featuring the kinetic vehicles, a bike rodeo and a skateboard extravaganza.

Mueller said they will have a kinetic sculpture competition with local artists who put together teams. They will build on-site kinetic sculptures which will then be raffled after the community votes on its favorite. There will also be "mutant toys" for kids, which they can build themselves from different parts.

The Snake Pit Roller Derby Dames will be the "kinetic cops" who will hand out awards and tickets for being mediocre and being audacious.

Food trucks will be available for snacks and beverages as well.

"The gist is to do something that is creative and different for the community ... to push the community's imagination," Mueller said.

Gizmo-cda, inc. is a nonprofit makerspace which provides tools and materials for community members to use and learn new skills. Mueller said the summer camps will continue throughout the summer. Each week it holds two or three camps with different themes for most ages - from 4-year-olds through high school students.

"We do things for adults too," Mueller said.

Mueller said she recently read a statistic that said when kindergartners today graduate high school, 65 percent of their jobs will be jobs that don't exist yet and learning some of the engineering and creativity skills early in life is important.

"I think that that's a real important thing to understand because when we educate, it's about knowing facts and knowing how things work," Mueller said. "It's about being able to put those things together in unusual and different ways, and I think that's what this does."