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…
Playtesting
A couple of Saturdays ago Gary and Sarah Gardiner of Dream Flight Adventures spent some time in MAKESHOP prototyping a new interactive, educational program. Gary has been developing this interactive software for quite some time and recently he was asked to implement it into a classroom in Shaler Area School District. The program is really fun to experience and I can…
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…
Guest puppet makers
A couple of weeks ago, we were visited by artists Zach Dorn and Murphi Cook. Zach and Murphi are two local artists. Zach was even a participant in the Museum’s Tough Art program two years ago. This particular Saturday had the two of them making shadow puppets with our visitors. They had a very simple set up with a…
Knitting with YouthALIVE!
Knit the Bridge is a local art initiative by the Fiber Arts Guild to cover an entire Pittsburgh bridge with colorful knit (or crocheted) panels. MAKESHOP has hosted a KtB drop-off box, and we’ve had several visits in the past from guest KtB knitters. Last week, KtB brought a team of high school students from a KtB school residency to run a…
MAKEnight
The third MAKEnight, an after hours event for adults, was held onFebruary 7th and it was a blast! Over 150 adults visited the museum for a fun night of making. We had many activities in MAKESHOP and STUDIO that encouraged people explore and create. In MAKESHOP, we let people felt using special felting needles along with a form of wet…
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…