Welcome, let's get started!
Hello world, and welcome to Making Makers. This website will serve as a tool to share my experience working to help spread and support Maker Culture and S.T.E.A.M. (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) education initiatives. Over the last year I have been working to build a Makerspace for children at our Children's Museum, where I work as the Creative Arts Lead. Our Makerspace opened to the public in June, and on July 12th, we hosted a grand opening event for the space. (Pictures from this event can be seen in the slide show below). Our Makerspace has three (3) primary areas of focus, working with textiles, working with electronics, and working with shop tools. The special thing about our Makerspace is our target audience; the museum I work for has a target audience of children 0-8 years of age. Although some of our programming, esspecially during the summer months may appeal to children outside of this target range, we really work hard to ensure an environment where all visitors to the space, regardless of age, can participate. When we began developing the space there were many Playbooks, and other guides, for creating a makerspace, but there was nothing really in realm of developing spaces and activities for children in primary school and earlier. On the links section of this site you will find those pages I found useful in our development of the space, and the programming that we do. I will try my best to update it regularly as I find new inspiration and models. On this site I will also keep a blog, updating progress in our space, how it evolves, what activities seem to work, which ones didn't seem to flow, and what we are currently working on, so check back often.