MAKEnight, April 4
MAKEnight is an amazing event held at the Museum. It is an after-hours event that lets adults (and only adults) play and explore in the Museum. The event has been a huge success over the past couple of months. We decided to make this latest MAKEnight a little bit different from the others. Typically, we only have attendees explore and…
Meet a Maker!
If you’ve visited the MAKESHOP on a weekend, chances are you’ve met and created with Allison! Name/ Nickname: Alison, but some of my friends and family call me Ali or Al. Favorite color: Hot pink! (And green) How long have you been working at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh? I started working in MAKESHOP in August 2012 but I’ve been helping…
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…
Simple machines in MAKESHOP
I recently had the opportunity to work with a kindergarten class from the Environmental Charter School. We had a partnership with them that created a residency for two of our teaching artists to visit the school to plan and co-teach lessons. Nick and I were asked to help with the first grade and a kindergarten classroom. Nick helped the first…
Bombs away!
These days in Pittsburgh, I find myself sitting around waiting for signs of spring. Until last weekend. I found the perfect remedy to beat the wintertime blues… BATH BOMBS! What better way to treat yourself than soaking up warmth in a bath tub or hot tub, knowing you made your very own bath fizzy. The ingredients and directions are quite…
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…
Ready to Glow!
Every month we have a different theme, putting in activities that are new and different. December’s theme is GLOW. We’re preparing a whole lot of new activities like blacklight drawing and glowing putty, and keeping in some favorites like light painting and stop motion! We might even have real glowing mushrooms (proven non-toxic non-poisonous.) There will also be GLOW activities…
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…