ACM Conference Animation
A couple of weeks ago, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh hosted the Association of Children’s Museums conference. This prestigious event brought together over 1,000 international museum professionals for three days of presentations, workshops, and events. It was a blast meeting all these people from across the world. It was incredibly inspiration to share ideas, tell stories, and hear about other museums. I…
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…
Youth invade MAKESHOP
On February 22nd, we held our second Youth Maker Night. This was an after-hours event with a lot of tweens and teens, and no parents. We offered some new activities for the youth to try, including felting, recycled derby cars, e-textiles, tinkering with motors, and a demonstration of a 3D printer. It took the kids awhile to ease into the…
MAKEnight
The third MAKEnight, an after hours event for adults, was held onFebruary 7th and it was a blast! Over 150 adults visited the museum for a fun night of making. We had many activities in MAKESHOP and STUDIO that encouraged people explore and create. In MAKESHOP, we let people felt using special felting needles along with a form of wet…
MAKEnight, December 6
MAKEnight is an event held after hours at the Museum where adults can visit the museum to make things and meet new people while enjoying some food by Bar Marco and drinks from Wigle Whiskey. We held our second MAKEnight on December 6, 2012 with a sold out crowd! If you missed it, then mark your calendars for the next one on February 7!…
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…
Activated Origami
This was really cool workshop taught by one of our favorite guest makers, Sibel Deren Guler. Visitors were able to explore and learn how to create several origami projects. They were then encouraged by Deren and me to add lights and motors to their creations. This was the first time I witnessed activated origami and I loved it. These special…
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…
Adults in MAKESHOP!
We held our very first MAKEnight a couple of days ago. We essentially let a bunch of adults play and explore in MAKESHOP after the Museum closed. The theme of our first night was electricity. We had our 3D Printer on display creating some models. We also had our circuit blocks out, the EggBot, conductive play-dough and copper tape tinkering….
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…