Print and Play Academy
The Academy is badges, sorted into pathways. Fourteen pathways, a hundred and fifty-four badges, from the Safety Licence to shipping code inside the firmware every Atlas in the world gets flashed with. Every badge is a document you can read right on an Atlas through the Library, with checkpoints you work at your own speed and an assessment that is showing, not telling. And every single badge unlocks something real: a bench, a tool, a machine, a material, or a job. The rule underneath all of it is that you earn each thing yourself. You print before you design, you breadboard before you solder, you measure before you cut, and you build your own Atlas before it drives a rover. Nobody does the good part for you, and the tree runs all the way up to an apron with your name on it.
After-school sessions run Monday to Friday, 3 to 6 PM, ages 9 to 17, six spots a day. $30 an hour, two hour minimum, so $60 a session. Or grab the Month Pass: eight two hour sessions on whichever days suit you, $336, thirty percent off booking the same eight one at a time.
Ticking badges here plans a route, it does not record one. It lives in this browser only, there is no account and nothing is sent anywhere. Because it is a route, it follows the same rule the shop does: marking a badge fills in everything it comes after, and clearing one clears whatever was standing on it. The passport in the shop is the real record, and only staff sign that.
How to read it: lanes are pathways, badges climb left to right, and every arrow is earned. Follow any badge backwards and you get the road to it: printing before design, the breadboard before the iron, your own Atlas before the rover it drives. Gold diamonds are the three licences, which open a bench and are the only badges that can be taken back. Starred badges are capstones. The bottom lane is the ladder: junior mentor, specialist, mentor, lead hand, apprentice.
How to hang it: the tree prints as a row of numbered tiles after this page. In the print dialog pick letter paper in landscape orientation, then lay the tiles left to right in page order and the lanes line up edge to edge. Trim the inner margins if you want a seamless wall poster.
How it works
Read, then bench
Read the badge before the bench, then bring it with you and work the checkpoints at your own speed. Nobody is timing you. Every badge ends with what changes for you when you pass.
Assessment is showing
When a checkpoint says get assessed, you find a staff member and show them. Not perfect, real: doing the thing, knowing why, and calling your own mistakes counts for more than a lucky first try.
Every badge unlocks something
This is not a wall of certificates. Each badge opens a bench, a tool, a machine, a material or a job: the iron, the hand tool wall, the filament shelf, the farm queue, the repair bench, the range. Click any badge to see what it actually gets you.
Three licences
Safety, Hand Tool and Soldering. A licence opens a bench for good and it is the only kind of badge we can take back. They are the gold diamonds on the tree, and in ten years we have taken back two.
Start anywhere after Shop
Safety first, always. After that the tree is wide on purpose: paper rockets, a Tinkercad nameplate, a joke pack on an Atlas and a breadboard LED are all first-session badges. Nine year olds and sixteen year olds start in different corners of the same map.
The ladder out the top
Pathways end in capstones. Capstones lead to the ladder: junior mentor, specialist, mentor, lead hand, then apprentice, the volunteer rung with an apron, a hook, a nook, and real shifts that count toward volunteer hours. Every rung is earned in the shop, by name, and none of them can be bought or skipped.