Harrison, the teacher
Harrison is a regular visitor to the Museum and has been mentioned before in this blog here. A couple of days ago, he visited MAKESHOP with an agenda. He needed help soldering some components. I can certainly help someone solder something, but Harrison really helped me understand what it means to turn your imagination into reality. Harrison planned on creating…
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…
Make something that rolls
The Museum’s YouthALIVE program visits MAKESHOP once a month. YouthALIVE is an after-school program of Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The group is made up of middle school students from a school across the street. Lately, we’ve been giving the students a challenge to complete. This week, we asked them to create something that rolls. The students had three days to…
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…
“Warmth” Workshops
Our January programmatic theme of “warmth” meant return visits by two great Guest Makers, Theresa Baughman and Deren Guler. Check out some photos from their workshops! “Warm Fuzzies” with Theresa Baughman Theresa, one of our former MAKESHOP interns, set up our workshop area with everything kids needed to sew a pillow that can be warmed up in the microwave. There wasn’t…
Puppet Prototype
Each month, our staff picks a programmatic theme for MAKESHOP that helps us to decide on what activities to provide. Our theme in MAKESHOP for the month of February is puppets. We decided to explore different ways to make puppets by reimagining recycled materials, sewing finger puppets and cloth puppets, building marionettes and playing with shadows puppets. As always, we will integrate digital…
Teenagers and Shopbots
The Museum sees a lot of visitors every week. Most of them are under five years old, but every week during the school year, a group of 6-8th grade students visit the Museum for our after-school program, YouthALIVE! These students visit MAKESHOP about once a month. We try to give them design challenges to help them to be creative and…
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….
SparkTruck Pit Stop
We had some amazing guests visit the Museum from Stanford University in sunny California. Jason, Didi and Eugene have spent the summer traveling across the United States in a mobile workshop dubbed the SparkTruck. Check it out! Along the way, they have been stopping at museums, community centers, events, and parks… Anywhere they can find. Their truck is full of various…
Prototyping New Programs
The MAKESHOP staff likes to prototype our programming. Sometimes this step can be the most fun part of developing new activities for our visitors. Our theme for the month of September is “Books and Bags.” We set out at the end of August to figure the best ways for visitors to create these two things. Along with the best ways…