Puppet Prototype
Each month, our staff picks a programmatic theme for MAKESHOP that helps us to decide on what activities to provide. Our theme in MAKESHOP for the month of February is puppets. We decided to explore different ways to make puppets by reimagining recycled materials, sewing finger puppets and cloth puppets, building marionettes and playing with shadows puppets. As always, we will integrate digital…
Make some noise
The students from the Museum’s after school program, YouthALIVE!, visited MAKESHOP a couple of weeks ago to work on a build challenge. They spent three days trying to design and build something that made noise. As always, it is a fun experience to work with this group of kids. They created some amazing and inventive projects over the course of…
Explaining Things Through Animation
I have been having a good time playing around with animation in MAKESHOP. Our stop-motion program allows you to create a simple movie by taking pictures of object while moving them around. A couple of days ago we had some of our conductive play-doh out for visitors to explore. The conductive play-doh acts as a conductor that can be used…
Youth Maker Night
In November, MAKESHOP hosted the first ever Youth Maker Night. Kids, ages 10 to 15, were given the opportunity to visit MAKESHOP after hours without their parents. We had a lot of electricity activities for the youth to make things and explore. The circuit blocks were out with some conductive play-doh. We also had LED lights and conductive tape, and…
Making a very big costume…
I’m not an expert at anything, but I am really good at asking questions. I wanted to make a JEDI KNIGHT robe for Halloween. Problem: I have never sewn anything this big or complex before. Thankfully, I was able to ask Rebecca, a fellow Teaching Artist, and Lea, one of our interns, for help. They showed me the importance of sketching…
Marble Maze
What can you make with an over sized hole punch? A couple of days ago a visitor created a really cool marble maze puzzle type thing. He spent a long time just tinkering with all of the different pieces of recycled materials in MAKESHOP. He eventually settled on using several tubes and a cardboard box that already had some holes punched out…
Stop-Motion…What else can it do?
We are still continuing to test our stop-motion prototype. I tried out a couple of different techniques using our current setup. I was able to rig the camera into a position that allows it to see the entire MAKESHOP. We made a pretty simple animation of Nick while he was cleaning up one of the tables. Experimenting with animation in…
Light Painting Results
We have finally gone beyond the prototyping stage of Light Painting. Rebecca explained a lot about the process in this blog post. I have had some more time to set up the workshop side of MAKESHOP to better facilitate light painting with our visitors. The exploration of this technique is really fun. I have had kids and adults of all…
Activated Origami
This was really cool workshop taught by one of our favorite guest makers, Sibel Deren Guler. Visitors were able to explore and learn how to create several origami projects. They were then encouraged by Deren and me to add lights and motors to their creations. This was the first time I witnessed activated origami and I loved it. These special…
The Next Iteration
It is always great to see visitors returning to the Museum with projects that they started in MAKESHOP. This specific project was a wooden car that a boy and his grandfather had started building in MAKESHOP in June. They were hoping to add some more things to their car. They certainly came on the right day. We were prototyping some…