Putting Gears on the Wall
My gear prototype has now gone vertical. A project is never finished, you can always change something or introduce a new variable. I decided to try out our gear setup in a different location in the MAKESHOP. I ended up mounting the entire structure to the wall with some hangers, zip-ties, and magnets. I don’t like it when things stay…
Animation in the MAKESHOP
Each month, MAKESHOP decides on a theme to help us pick and develop activities. This month our theme is “time.” Stop-motion animation takes time to experience. It also lets you manipulate the timing of pictures, so we decided to do some stop-motion animation this month. Our stop-motion machine got a little bit of an upgrade. The controls are still housed…
Building a chair with the Board
Messy tables, goofy chairs, and lots of smiles… We held our annual Board Retreat for our Board Members and Directors of the Museum on October 24. The MAKESHOP team challenged them to “create a place to sit” using found and recycled materials. Everyone was split into four teams with one Teaching Artist to serve as a coach and spent thirty…
Adults in MAKESHOP!
We held our very first MAKEnight a couple of days ago. We essentially let a bunch of adults play and explore in MAKESHOP after the Museum closed. The theme of our first night was electricity. We had our 3D Printer on display creating some models. We also had our circuit blocks out, the EggBot, conductive play-dough and copper tape tinkering….
Monsters in MAKESHOP
Adam King is a really cool maker with a really cool hobby. He experiments with special effects and creates amazing monster masks and puppets. It was so much fun to see MAKESHOP full of creepy monsters a couple of Saturdays ago. We weren’t sure if kids would get scared about it, but Adam is so inviting that almost everyone was…
Disguises
A couple of days ago a family came into the MAKESHOP and made some masks. They were so much fun to interact with. They were a genuinely goofy group of people. The two boys immediately knew that they were going to make “bank robber” masks. The mother and daughter designed and built a very intricate mask. During this entire time there…
A plethora of projects…
Augustine and his sister were already hard at work in a corner of the MAKESHOP when I came back from break. They were working on two intricate projects: a wooden truck and a tadpole. These two projects were brought to my attention because Augustine wanted to cut a piece of scrap wood to a certain size. I helped him with…
Masks!
Our theme for the month of October is identity. We’ve decided to explore this theme by creating masks and costumes. A mask is a great way to change your persona. We’ve spent the past couple of days experimenting with different materials and designs. As usual, we invite our visitors to share in this prototyping process. You can learn a lot…
Making Connections
Taking something that was going to be thrown away and giving it a new purpose is always rewarding. The “Book-Shelf” pictured above is a great example of a project that uses entirely re-purposed junk. Actually, “junk” seems like a negative term… Let’s call it “repurposed treasure.” My friend, Becky, wanted to make gift cards for her salon (Tula Organic) in the…
Halloween came early…
We started prototyping some projects for October acouple of days ago. It was really hard not to go with a Halloween theme. Alexis and I spent the morning creating some DIY decorations for the MAKESHOP. I figured that it would be really cool to add some electronics to some simple cardboard decorations. As always, this process of prototyping programming is…