Sharks in MAKESHOP
I’ve noticed an interesting theme in the past few stop-motion animations made in MAKESHOP. Apparently, a couple of the paper shadow puppets from our programming in the month of February have made there way over to the animation station. There is a cut out of a shark with a movable mouth that has become the star of our stop-motion animations….
MAKESHOP Panoramas
Last April, MAKESHOP was photographed by a robot. A robot named GigaPan, which uses motors and gears to move the camera and press the shutter button. After all these zoomed-in, super-detailed photos are taken, a special program “stitches” them together so it looks like one long photo that is bigger, longer and more detailed than a regular camera is able to see at…
Make something that rolls
The Museum’s YouthALIVE program visits MAKESHOP once a month. YouthALIVE is an after-school program of Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The group is made up of middle school students from a school across the street. Lately, we’ve been giving the students a challenge to complete. This week, we asked them to create something that rolls. The students had three days to…
A Week in MAKESHOP (in two minutes)
MAKESHOP is not a static exhibit. It changes to accommodate a variety of activities and programs, such as schools groups, guest makers, play-testing, meetings, photo shoots, themed activities, etc. Tables get moved, messes are made (and cleaned up), things are broken (and fixed), and everyone has fun. We made a time-lapse video of the workshop side of MAKESHOP over the span of an…
3D Modeling
If you’re a frequent visitor to our space or this blog, you may know that we have a MakerBot Replicator. We pulled it out recently for Youth Maker Night, an event for older children and young teens. We figured it would be a fun thing to check out while people were snacking in between working on projects. Unfortunately, some of the printer settings were accidentally reset before the event…
A year’s visit
Thomas and Aiden visited the Museum with their dad a year ago. The family is from Buffalo, NY and they visit Pittsburgh once a year. Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is always one of their stops. I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with them during last year’s visit. There is an older blog post that I wrote about…
Mermaid Puppet
When 4-year-old Reese came in, she was sure she wanted to make something… she just wasn’t sure what. After seeing a prototype marionette our Teaching Artist Lea had made, she was immediately inspired. “My favorite princess is Ariel. I’m going to make a mermaid puppet,” she declared, “And when I get home I’m going to put on a puppet show…
Animation and a lot of jewelry
Michael and Katie are two kids who really took full advantage of MAKESHOP. They spent some time getting introduced to two different projects, mainly stop-motion animation and jewelry making. After an introduction, they set out to create several amazing and varied projects. Katie spent some time making felt balls out of wool and then proceeded to make necklace using her…
“Warmth” Workshops
Our January programmatic theme of “warmth” meant return visits by two great Guest Makers, Theresa Baughman and Deren Guler. Check out some photos from their workshops! “Warm Fuzzies” with Theresa Baughman Theresa, one of our former MAKESHOP interns, set up our workshop area with everything kids needed to sew a pillow that can be warmed up in the microwave. There wasn’t…
Puppets and technology
How do you mix paper bag crafts with technology? Our usual answer to a question like that is “put a light on it!” Basically, we tried to figure out what we could add to a paper bag puppet to make it more “techy.” Rebecca created a very cool example that combines a paper bag with an electronic circuit. When you…