Rowan’s Electric Car
Rowan and his grandfather are frequent visitors to the Museum. They’re the kind of visitors who typically spend most of their visit in one exhibit. This particular day they decided to spend over an hour tinkering in the MAKESHOP. Rowan helped me assemble a new circuit block for other visitors to enjoy. I often find that it’s good practice to…
Youth Alive: Craft Stick Explosions
Pardon the wacky camera work in the videos above and below. I’m for giving the camera to the kids and letting them have a chance to document a project. We decided to let our the students from our after school club, YouthALIVE!, play around with creating “craft stick explosions”. They really seemed to enjoy it. I always like the change of…
MAKESHOP Maker Micro Grants
Last month, we challenged artists, makers, and organizations to propose projects for the Wearables competition of the MAKESHOP Maker Micro Grant program. These micro grants will help programs and organizations to provide youth with meaningful making opportunities. We received many creative and innovative projects from a variety of individuals and organizations. We were incredibly impressed with the projects and thankful…
Made in MAKESHOP
The staff at the MAKESHOP has been collecting videos of visitors explaining what they made and reflecting on the experience that they had. It is always interesting to hear what inspires, intrigues, engages or teaches our visitors. We will be sharing these as we get them, so watch out for them.
Impromptu Shop Bots…
Two families came in to the MAKESHOP a few days ago and asked if we were building robots. It was a quiet day, so I told them that we could if we had the materials. One of the mothers explained to me that her youngest daughter had built a Shop Bot during a class visit to the Museum. Apparently her…
Tess.
Tess visited the Museum a couple of days ago. She and her family were an absolute joy for the entire MakeShop team to interact with. I use the term “interact” instead of “facilitate” because she did most of, if not all of, the work. She accepted some tips and pointers on various woodworking techniques, but she had this project under control. She was…
FrankenToy
What happens when you give an eleven year old and his mom a bunch of random toy parts? Well, they create something extraordinary, funny and… creepy. It’s always fun when visitors visit the MakeShop to simply tinker around with whatever we have to offer. This particular mom and son duo experimented with reassembling various toy parts. It was funny! The…
An experience in animation
I decided it was high time to start prototyping our stop-motion animation program once again. To be honest, I really wanted an excuse to play with the program myself. I decided to do some stop-motion drawing with a dry-erase board. The setup I built for the activitiy wasn’t pretty or professional, but my crude setup did not detract Thomas and…
Youth Alive: Survival Kit Project
Over the past several weeks, students from the Museum’s YouthALIVE after school program worked on a very interesting design challenge. The kids were tasked with creating a “survival kit” for someone stranded on a deserted island. They were afforded time in the MakeShop to design and create the objects for their kits. The students worked in teams and were given…
Behind the Scenes of WHEELS
A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about the prototyping we were doing for some of the components of our new exhibit Wheels! The pictures above give a behind the scenes look at the exhibit being constructed. The little plastic skate ramp we prototyped has transformed into a massive installation. Our workshop is full of wheels. I cannot wait…