Puppet Prototype
Each month, our staff picks a programmatic theme for MAKESHOP that helps us to decide on what activities to provide. Our theme in MAKESHOP for the month of February is puppets. We decided to explore different ways to make puppets by reimagining recycled materials, sewing finger puppets and cloth puppets, building marionettes and playing with shadows puppets. As always, we will integrate digital…
Make some noise
The students from the Museum’s after school program, YouthALIVE!, visited MAKESHOP a couple of weeks ago to work on a build challenge. They spent three days trying to design and build something that made noise. As always, it is a fun experience to work with this group of kids. They created some amazing and inventive projects over the course of…
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…
Chair + Lights = ?
The month of December is over and our GLOW theme is done, but that doesn’t mean that we are not still trying to add lights to anything and everything in MAKESHOP. After spending an entire month playing with lights and creating all kinds of switches, I decided that it would be really cool to make a chair that lights up…
Maker Education Initiative
Are you 18-22 years old and interested in maker culture? Do you know a young adult who loves to tinker and enjoys working with children? We’re excited to announce a great new opportunity for this summer! MAKESHOP at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is partnering with the Maker Education Initiative, a program linked to MAKE Magazine, to launch the Maker Corps…
Circuit block progression
I recently noticed that I have greatly changed my facilitation methods for circuit blocks. When I first started at MAKESHOP, I ran circuit blocks like a demonstration. I’d show kids how each of the various types of components worked, and then ask if they wanted to play with any of them. This didn’t last long as a style, because a…
Teenagers and Shopbots
The Museum sees a lot of visitors every week. Most of them are under five years old, but every week during the school year, a group of 6-8th grade students visit the Museum for our after-school program, YouthALIVE! These students visit MAKESHOP about once a month. We try to give them design challenges to help them to be creative and…
A family’s prototype
Here is a quick story about an amazing pair of makers that spent an entire Saturday working on a single idea, which was “What can you do with a mousetrap?” When I joined this father and son team, they were already under production with their creation: a mousetrap car. Apparently the dad saw that we had a couple of mousetraps…
Kai’s Invention
Kai is a regular visitor of the Museum. He is the kind of visitor who really enjoys tinkering with anything and everything. On this particular day, we were experimenting with making light-up cards using copper tape and LEDs. Kai was very interested in exploring what could be done with the copper tape and a piece of paper. He already had…
Inside the Sewing Machine
Over the winter holidays, we did a lot of take-apart here at the museum. Tons of old audio equipment, toys, printers… and a sewing machine! I had a great team of four kids helping me get that stubborn front off. It really didn’t want to go! We recently replaced this machine with a newer one, and thought we’d keep the old…