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…
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…
Re-purposing Old Parts
I decided to drastically change the xylophone that I built for MAKESHOP. While prototyping some ideas with a group of preschool students, some teachers and I noticed that they really enjoy filling up containers and dumping them out. They also really like to put things through holes and fit different size pieces together. I was unofficially commissioned to create a simple prototype…
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…
The Next Iteration
It is always great to see visitors returning to the Museum with projects that they started in MAKESHOP. This specific project was a wooden car that a boy and his grandfather had started building in MAKESHOP in June. They were hoping to add some more things to their car. They certainly came on the right day. We were prototyping some…
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…
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…