Lunch Bucket Buddies
The trades

Try all of them. Then pick.

Nobody knows what they're good at until they've done it. The kits move through a different trade each time on purpose — carpentry, then structures, then plumbing, then wiring — so a kid gets a real taste of each one before deciding anything.

Start with Kit #1What going deeper looks like

Where we actually areKit #1 is finished and shipping. The rest of the trades are designed but not built yet — this is the roadmap, not a catalogue, and it will change as we test each kit with real kids.

One kit, one trade

Ten trades, and the buddy who works each one

Each kit is a small, finishable project built around what that trade really does. No lectures — the work carries the lesson. Electrical and HVAC join the rotation as those kits come online.

  • Amir

    Amir

    Design

    Draw the thing before anyone builds it — plans, materials, and why a room is the shape it is.

  • Salvador

    Salvador

    Surveying

    Measure, mark, and set the build out before a single tool comes off the truck.

  • Eldridge

    Eldridge

    Excavating

    Dig, backfill, compact. Small machines, big consequences if the ground is wrong.

  • Carmen

    Carmen

    Carpentry

    Frame a house from laser-cut balsa. Square corners, level floors, a roof that sits right.

  • Connor

    Connor

    Concrete

    Mix, pour, screed. Find out what too much water does before it matters.

  • Raelyn

    Raelyn

    Roofing

    Overlap, slope, and the fact that water has never once run uphill.

  • Pierce

    Pierce

    Plumbing

    Real fittings at model scale. Dry-fit the run, find the leak, fix the leak.

  • Randy

    Randy

    Landscaping

    Grade a yard so the water goes where you want it. The first trade with a full track behind it.

  • Pemba

    Pemba

    Painting

    Prep, edges, and a finish that does not run. The part everyone underestimates.

  • Mrs. Hayes

    Mrs. Hayes

    Safety

    Not a trade — the habit underneath all of them. Look, think, prepare, work, clean.

The lid keeps the record

Every finished kit earns a sticker for the inside of the lid. After a year the bucket shows what a kid has actually tried — and which ones they went back to.

That's a better signal than any career quiz. "I keep choosing the building ones" is something a kid can notice about themselves, and it holds up because they earned it one project at a time.

  • Collector's
    Edition
    first 200
  • Kit 1Framing
  • Kit 2Bridge
  • Kit 3next up
  • Kit 4empty

A year in, the lid shows what they tried — and which trades they went back to.

The inside of the lid with a square for each completed kit.
When one of them sticks

Then you can go as deep as you want

Sampling is the point at the start. But when a kid keeps coming back to the same kind of work, a kit every few months stops being enough — they want the real thing.

Landscaping is the first trade with a full track written behind it: twenty modules across five levels, from "landscaping is dozens of careers" all the way to a capstone a contractor would recognise. The other trades follow the same shape as their kits come online.

See the landscaping track

What a deep track adds

  1. Lessons, not just builds

    Short hands-on sessions a parent, teacher, or camp leader can run in 25 minutes.

  2. Real sites

    The yard, the school grounds, the park. The landscape around the kid becomes the textbook.

  3. Levels that climb

    Identify it → do it → understand why → solve problems with it → be trusted with it.

  4. A way out the other side

    Enough skill and vocabulary to be useful on a crew, and a map of where the careers are.

Nine buddies, because nobody is good at everything

Amir designs, Carmen frames, Pierce plumbs, Pemba paints, Randy handles the landscape. The comic makes the same argument the kits do: find the part that fits you, and work with people who cover the rest.

Meet the crew

The character line-up: nine buddies and Mrs. Hayes.