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…
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…
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…
Aircraft Carrier
Joseph was a really fun kid to meet. He was one of those visitors who seemed to fit right in at MAKESHOP. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to create, but he came to a decision after he spent some time tinkering and exploring the materials. He first tinkered around with lighting up small LEDs with batteries. He eventually…
Making a very big costume…
I’m not an expert at anything, but I am really good at asking questions. I wanted to make a JEDI KNIGHT robe for Halloween. Problem: I have never sewn anything this big or complex before. Thankfully, I was able to ask Rebecca, a fellow Teaching Artist, and Lea, one of our interns, for help. They showed me the importance of sketching…
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…
On the Edge of Your Seat
At the end of last month, Children’s Museum Board Members gathered at the Museum for a Board retreat. How do you get to know your fellow Board Chairs? By dividing into teams and having a “chair” contest of course! A MAKESHOP Challenge was presented to the group: Divide into teams of six and create a meaningful chair using a container…
Building a chair with the Board
Messy tables, goofy chairs, and lots of smiles… We held our annual Board Retreat for our Board Members and Directors of the Museum on October 24. The MAKESHOP team challenged them to “create a place to sit” using found and recycled materials. Everyone was split into four teams with one Teaching Artist to serve as a coach and spent thirty…
Making Connections
Taking something that was going to be thrown away and giving it a new purpose is always rewarding. The “Book-Shelf” pictured above is a great example of a project that uses entirely re-purposed junk. Actually, “junk” seems like a negative term… Let’s call it “repurposed treasure.” My friend, Becky, wanted to make gift cards for her salon (Tula Organic) in the…