A classroom visit
I recently had the privilege of completing a residency at a kindergarten class at the Environmental Charter School. The class was exploring simple machines, such as pulleys, gears, inclined planes, wheels and axles, etc. I was asked to help plan and co-teach with their teacher, Jen. I always enjoy visiting schools. Typically, classes come to the Museum to explore and…
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…
Andrew’s Shield
Andrew is an interesting visitor. He typically has a plan for exactly what he wants to do or make at the Museum. The really fascinating thing is that his projects typically span the course of several visits to the Museum. He brings his projects back to improve them or build newer versions. He has a real knack for prototyping. This…
“MAKE”-APART
I really enjoy when visitors add their projects or creations to MAKESHOP. For example, two visitors, Max and Joey, helped build a new component for our Circuit Block Table. They repurposed a wheel from a remote control and the motor from a broken model boat. I showed them how to test the motor with a battery to see if it…
Robot Fabrication
Robots are a common theme here at MAKESHOP. We have robot sculptures overlooking our area. We live in what is ostensibly the robot capital of America. On her last day, one of our summer interns made a robot pillow to remember us by. Robots are, let’s face it, just plain awesome. Unfortunately, they also get repetitive after a while, which is why I’m always…
DIY Circuit Blocks
This was an extremely ambitious project that resulted in a couple great teaching moments. A mom and daughter were so fascinated with our circuit blocks that they wanted to make their own. We decided to make a battery block, a motor block and speaker block. As with any electronic project, we first had to test all of our components. Mom…
Hana-Chaser
Two of my favorite visitors returned to the Museum a couple of days ago and created another amazing project. Their first tinkering, electronic project was dubbed the “Hanna-Occupier”. Their latest project was a motorized car made out of simple, recycled parts. They decided to name it the “Hana-Chaser”. I was excited to collaborate on this great project. Since these were…
Exploring and Inventing
Who are inventors? Anyone can be an inventor… Most people probably picture an inventor as someone in a laboratory working with a bunch of complex machines. When I think of inventors, I picture anyone willing to try out something new. Kids are great at inventing things. Case in point: Usman and his “Spinny Thing”. Usman spent a lot of time…