YouthALIVE and Scratch
YouthALIVE is an after school club for middle schoolers that takes place at the Museum. A few weeks ago, we encouraged the students to do some simple digital programming projects. The students explored with 3D printing, our EggBot, and Scratch. Scratch (you can access their website here) is an amazing program developed by MIT. Scratch is a a great way…
Sharks in MAKESHOP
I’ve noticed an interesting theme in the past few stop-motion animations made in MAKESHOP. Apparently, a couple of the paper shadow puppets from our programming in the month of February have made there way over to the animation station. There is a cut out of a shark with a movable mouth that has become the star of our stop-motion animations….
A year’s visit
Thomas and Aiden visited the Museum with their dad a year ago. The family is from Buffalo, NY and they visit Pittsburgh once a year. Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is always one of their stops. I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with them during last year’s visit. There is an older blog post that I wrote about…
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…
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…
Family Fun
Ty and his sister spent a lot of time exploring animation. Actually, their entire family spent a lot of time exploring all of MAKESHOP. Their older brother was fascinated with the loom and spent most of his time weaving. Their siblings also had a blast exploring light painting. We experimented a lot with different light sources and different movement techniques….
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…
Stop-Motion…What else can it do?
We are still continuing to test our stop-motion prototype. I tried out a couple of different techniques using our current setup. I was able to rig the camera into a position that allows it to see the entire MAKESHOP. We made a pretty simple animation of Nick while he was cleaning up one of the tables. Experimenting with animation in…
Stop Motion Inspiration
This month, MAKESHOP is focusing on activities that relate to a theme of “time,” so we’ve fixed up our homemade stop motion animation station to be better than ever! Whether you’re new to stop motion, were inspired by one of the full-length movies that came out this year (The Pirates! Band of Misfits, ParaNorman, or Frankenweenie) or are in the season…
Animation in the MAKESHOP
Each month, MAKESHOP decides on a theme to help us pick and develop activities. This month our theme is “time.” Stop-motion animation takes time to experience. It also lets you manipulate the timing of pictures, so we decided to do some stop-motion animation this month. Our stop-motion machine got a little bit of an upgrade. The controls are still housed…