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…
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…
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…
Weaving Experiments Ahead
Weaving is a repetitive process, and we do a lot of it, but we love it and want to keep it fresh and interesting. So every time we start a new project, we start a new experiment! Sometimes it’s special colors, an unusual pattern, or turning it into something exciting. Our two most recent experiments are two of my all-time favorites….
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…
Marble Maze
What can you make with an over sized hole punch? A couple of days ago a visitor created a really cool marble maze puzzle type thing. He spent a long time just tinkering with all of the different pieces of recycled materials in MAKESHOP. He eventually settled on using several tubes and a cardboard box that already had some holes punched out…
Light Painting Tests
Each month, our staff decides on a theme to help us decide what projects and activities we want to offer to our visitors. Our November theme is “Time” and we’ve been messing around in the shop, brainstorming some fun, open-ended activities that emphasize the idea of time passing. We knew we wanted to do some light painting, so we started…
Disguises
A couple of days ago a family came into the MAKESHOP and made some masks. They were so much fun to interact with. They were a genuinely goofy group of people. The two boys immediately knew that they were going to make “bank robber” masks. The mother and daughter designed and built a very intricate mask. During this entire time there…
Halloween came early…
We started prototyping some projects for October acouple of days ago. It was really hard not to go with a Halloween theme. Alexis and I spent the morning creating some DIY decorations for the MAKESHOP. I figured that it would be really cool to add some electronics to some simple cardboard decorations. As always, this process of prototyping programming is…
Welcome to MAKESBURGH
I came in to work a couple of days ago to find an entire half of MAKESHOP covered in amazing cardboard structures, such as cars, boats, buildings and bridges. We’ve tried to make a cardboard town in the past, but this one is easily the most extensive. Visitors seemed to be more invested in their projects if they know that…