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…
CD Spin Art
Here is a great example of a visitor taking an existing exhibit piece and making it so much more fun. This visitor turned our circuit blocks into an art project. We were exploring the different circuit blocks and when we got to the block that contains an old CD drive I was asked if we had any CDs to test…
Learning from teachers
We don’t just serve children at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, we are also a resource for teachers. We offer many professional development workshops for teachers. Recently, we held a workshop to discuss the different options for early childhood educators to use the Museum. We offered teachers an opportunity to reflect on certain areas of the Museum and how these…
Chester’s field trip
We get a lot of interesting visitors to the Museum every day. This was the first time that a raccoon decided to visit. This particular raccoon was from a classroom that gives each student an opportunity to take something home, and sometimes it’s a puppet or a stuffed animal. The family is then encouraged to take the creature somewhere interesting…
A classroom visit
I recently had the privilege of completing a residency at a kindergarten class at the Environmental Charter School. The class was exploring simple machines, such as pulleys, gears, inclined planes, wheels and axles, etc. I was asked to help plan and co-teach with their teacher, Jen. I always enjoy visiting schools. Typically, classes come to the Museum to explore and…
“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…
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…