I have been thinking about starting a blog and website to cover my adventures in Making, and have finally gotten around to doing it. Our Makerspace officially opened almost 3 months ago at the start of June, and time has really flown by. We began our adventure over a year ago, planning and developing the space. We decided to focus on three (3) primary areas of work: Textiles, Electronics, and Woodworking/Tool working. When the space opened we opted to dedicate 1 month to each of the areas of focus, allowing visitors an opportunity to really come into the space, learn and build a skill set, before moving on to the next module. In order to assist in building those skill sets we developed weekly workshops called "The Basics" that taught the fundamentals of what was going on in the space, and how to use the tools and materials safely.Our first month was dedicated entirely to working with textiles. Our first week of "The Basics" was dedicated to hand sewing and mastering the 3 basic hand stitches, the running stitch, back stitch and over cast stitch. During the next week of workshops we focused on incorporating fasteners, how to properly sew on 2 hole and 4 hole buttons, and create a button hole. The third weeks workshop was dedicated to teaching children to crochet, both by hand and with a hook. We had originally planned on also including knitting in this workshop, I currently find knitting to be quite difficult to teach to younger children, (8 and below) but they really took to the crochet hooks. I certainly haven't given up on working knitting into the program yet, but probably need to develop my own skill set more before trying again. Our last week of textiles was dedicated to the Sewing Machine. We found some delightful sewing machine mazes and dot to dots at skiptomylou.org. They were a wonderful resource for gauging the children's ability to be left along with the machine. If the child was able to satisfactorily complete the maze with little assistance and then the dot to dot activity on their own we felt pretty comfortable allowing them to use the machine and they would earn their sewing machine driving license.
All and All I feel that our month of textile work went very well. I wish I would have included some deconstructing activities though, to help promote the open-ended exploration and making that was happening, but as we were really just trying to introduce tools and materials during this month, and not so much focus on the processes, I think we did pretty well. I am definitely working on incorporating some Plush toy take apart workshops, and clothing dissections for the next time we bring out our textile tools.
July was dedicated to the study of electronics. Daily we would provide some old electronic device for guests to take apart and explore, then we would have some type of activity that we we were working on for the day. We began by exploring simple circuits and building LED throwies. During "The Basics" the first week we explored the simple circuit and concepts of positive and negative energy and shots. The next week we expanded on this by adding switches and exploring the world of paper circuits using LED's and copper conductive tape, based on the MIT High low tech activity. We encouraged visitors to try to develop different switches and buttons to turn their circuits on and off. Most guests seemed to have enough going on just working on the basics of circuitry without the switches, but I did see one kid who was probably about 7 build a flashlight from aluminum foil, an LED and some double sided foam tape. The next week during "The Basics" we expanded on the paper circuit concept by adding 3 dimensions and exploring Electric Origami with some help from Evil Mad Scientist. (http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2008/paper-circuitry-at-home-electric-origami/) I wanted to break out the irons and iron some circuits, I have done this activity this way before, but the foil I had purchased kept breaking, and kids LOVE the copper tape so we kept with that as our base material. During this time I also set up our Makey Makey with a Mario game, and encouraged the guests to explore conduction by creating their own controllers for the game. I had hoped to do a lesson on pressure sensors and how to build them from recycled materials, but the museum was just too busy during this time to get it in and make it worth while. I hope to revisit this idea during the slower season in the fall and try to convert our stair way in the museum to our second level into a piano. Our last week of electronics we spent some time covering introductions to computer programming. I set up several laptops for guests which included Scratch (scratch.mit.edu/studios/31433/) As well as a few laptops with our PICO Cricket systems. Programming is definitely
not my strongest suit, but the visitors all had a great time, and really seemed to enjoy using scratch and the PICO
system. It never ceases to amaze me how much our young visitors can do when they are just left on their own to
explore and discover!
August was dedicated completely to using hand tools, and wood working. During this month we had initially planned
to continue "The Basics" program, but the space was in such demand it was impossible to steal a portion of it for a
workshop setting, so we began teaching kids on the go about all of the tools available in the space. We primarily
focused on hand tools, with children always having access to hammers, an assortment of screw drivers, hand drills
and miter boxes and hand saws. The children also had access to a drill press (for jobs the hand drill couldn't handle)
as well as battery operated dremel tools. While the space was open we never had structured activities, but rather
open build time, where guests could come in, peruse the materials we had available, and make what ever they chose
to make based on the materials and tools available. Over the month I saw a good number of "bird houses" robots,
and a surprising variety of vehicles, from boats and planes, to cars galore. We began the month with 1 dozen hand
drills, and after the first week I was down to 3 that were still operational. If I could go back and do it again, I probably
would have picked up all the antique hand drills I found at a local junk shop, rather than going with the new ones,
they just don't make them like they used to, and I would have probably ordered another drill press.
Now that we have explored our 3 basic areas for a month each, or next challenge is creating an open ended space
where guests and visitors can really be allowed to chose what they want to work with on each visit, while also breaking
the space, and activities down for a much younger audience, as the older kids are going back to school.
All and All I feel that our month of textile work went very well. I wish I would have included some deconstructing activities though, to help promote the open-ended exploration and making that was happening, but as we were really just trying to introduce tools and materials during this month, and not so much focus on the processes, I think we did pretty well. I am definitely working on incorporating some Plush toy take apart workshops, and clothing dissections for the next time we bring out our textile tools.
July was dedicated to the study of electronics. Daily we would provide some old electronic device for guests to take apart and explore, then we would have some type of activity that we we were working on for the day. We began by exploring simple circuits and building LED throwies. During "The Basics" the first week we explored the simple circuit and concepts of positive and negative energy and shots. The next week we expanded on this by adding switches and exploring the world of paper circuits using LED's and copper conductive tape, based on the MIT High low tech activity. We encouraged visitors to try to develop different switches and buttons to turn their circuits on and off. Most guests seemed to have enough going on just working on the basics of circuitry without the switches, but I did see one kid who was probably about 7 build a flashlight from aluminum foil, an LED and some double sided foam tape. The next week during "The Basics" we expanded on the paper circuit concept by adding 3 dimensions and exploring Electric Origami with some help from Evil Mad Scientist. (http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2008/paper-circuitry-at-home-electric-origami/) I wanted to break out the irons and iron some circuits, I have done this activity this way before, but the foil I had purchased kept breaking, and kids LOVE the copper tape so we kept with that as our base material. During this time I also set up our Makey Makey with a Mario game, and encouraged the guests to explore conduction by creating their own controllers for the game. I had hoped to do a lesson on pressure sensors and how to build them from recycled materials, but the museum was just too busy during this time to get it in and make it worth while. I hope to revisit this idea during the slower season in the fall and try to convert our stair way in the museum to our second level into a piano. Our last week of electronics we spent some time covering introductions to computer programming. I set up several laptops for guests which included Scratch (scratch.mit.edu/studios/31433/) As well as a few laptops with our PICO Cricket systems. Programming is definitely
not my strongest suit, but the visitors all had a great time, and really seemed to enjoy using scratch and the PICO
system. It never ceases to amaze me how much our young visitors can do when they are just left on their own to
explore and discover!
August was dedicated completely to using hand tools, and wood working. During this month we had initially planned
to continue "The Basics" program, but the space was in such demand it was impossible to steal a portion of it for a
workshop setting, so we began teaching kids on the go about all of the tools available in the space. We primarily
focused on hand tools, with children always having access to hammers, an assortment of screw drivers, hand drills
and miter boxes and hand saws. The children also had access to a drill press (for jobs the hand drill couldn't handle)
as well as battery operated dremel tools. While the space was open we never had structured activities, but rather
open build time, where guests could come in, peruse the materials we had available, and make what ever they chose
to make based on the materials and tools available. Over the month I saw a good number of "bird houses" robots,
and a surprising variety of vehicles, from boats and planes, to cars galore. We began the month with 1 dozen hand
drills, and after the first week I was down to 3 that were still operational. If I could go back and do it again, I probably
would have picked up all the antique hand drills I found at a local junk shop, rather than going with the new ones,
they just don't make them like they used to, and I would have probably ordered another drill press.
Now that we have explored our 3 basic areas for a month each, or next challenge is creating an open ended space
where guests and visitors can really be allowed to chose what they want to work with on each visit, while also breaking
the space, and activities down for a much younger audience, as the older kids are going back to school.