A Maker Faire is a Family Affair

My son and I just returned from the NYC Maker Faire that took place in Queens this past weekend.  It was our first…and it won’t be our last.  My 12-year-old son and I had a blast. 

The Maker Faire (which takes place in cities around the world at various times) had so much to see and do, we couldn’t even see it all in a weekend, though we desperately tried!

Although the first Maker Faires centered around technology and adult tinkerers, they have evolved through the years to include families and all sorts of hobbies and crafting.

As we wrote about in our previous article, Why A Maker Faire?, a Maker Faire gathers people of all ages including:

• tech enthusiasts
• crafters
• tinkerers
• bakers/chefs
• hobbyists
• educators
• scientists
• science clubs
• engineers
• authors
• artists
• students
• commercial exhibitors

What Can You Do at a Maker Faire?

Breaking it down in more manageable terms, I would describe a Maker Faire as the opportunity to Play, Learn, Discover, and be Inspired.

Play

There were so many areas to play or tinker.  One vendor brought all the PVC parts and kids could make their own PVC marshmallow shooter. 

Another one taught kids how to use a piece of pool noodle, a balloon, and some fun colored duct tape to create a marshmallow launcher on the cheap.

Kids could make soap, complete with scent, colors, and even a toy inside of it.  They used paper to create a colorful inspirational city.  

And if families could bear standing in a long line, they could even go up in a boom lift, put on a glove, and manage the Hand of Man.

The Hand of Man is a 26-foot long hydraulically-actuated human hand to physically pick up a junker car 10 feet off the ground and let it go, crashing it to the pavement below.  Kids and adults lined up to do this throughout the day, definitely a crowd pleaser.

My son loved the fireball game.  Standing behind the gate, 4 kids would throw a ball to try to hit the target on the different colored wood stands. 

If they hit it, a burst of fire filled the air.  If they all hit it at the same time, a fireball show would ensue.

Learn

Thanks to the advice of our new friends, Barbara and John, my son and I made a beeline for the Google tent where they teach kids and adults how to solder. 

We made a Maker badge, complete with a blinking light, coin battery, and butterfly clasp pin backs.  We soldered all these items on the back of the large plastic badge.

Why is soldering so important?  Well, first off, it’s just cool.  You use a metal wire to melt pieces together to solder two separate metal pieces together.

Second, it’s one of the first steps in learning how to put together circuits.  Knowing how to solder will help kids feel less apprehensive about trying to learn circuit boards.

My son and I stumbled upon a crafting area where they had different tables to learn about cross stitch, knitting, and more. 

We chose a design we liked and the instructor helped us choose all of the embroidery threads we needed to make our design. 

She gave us an embroidery needle, taught us how to cross-stitch, and we were on our way! 

We didn’t get to finish our project, but she gave us a bag and we collected all of our materials so we could take them home and continue working on them.  There was no charge for the instruction or the materials.

I loved how this group of makers got together and provided this area for others to learn these great skills.  They took out the intimidation of learning and guided us through the process.

Embroidery, cross-stitch, knitting, sewing, and so many other skills and hobbies are not being passed down to today’s generations.  Other things like gaming, social media, etc. occupy our kids’ minds.

Helping your kids learn new maker projects lets them explore their creative sides, learn new skills, and make things they never knew they could.  And better yet, this new learning can begin to train their brain to be more creative in other areas of their lives – like school, projects, science experiments, and problem-solving.

A Maker Faire is a great place to expose your family to all sorts of crafts and trades and get the opportunity for some hands-on exposure.

Who knows?  You might help your child stumble upon a new passion or stumble upon one for yourself. 

Discover

Maker Faires are great for discovering new things…including gumption.  Blythe Serrano had a table to show attendees the rechargeable Light-Up at Night Pet Collar she created, that has a sensor to turn on LED lights at night so cars and people can see them.

Her inspiration came from the death of her cat when it was hit by a car at night.  She wanted to save others from the same tragic event. 

She is a college student and learning how to improve her design and increase the battery charge from 4 nights to longer.  Blythe has presented at numerous Maker Faires and shows and has won awards for her design.  Blythe has gumption.

A group of high school students from Stoney Brook High School came out to the fair to teach kids about biology and DNA.  Here my son is pulling out DNA cells from a strawberry which he crushed, added chemicals to, and turned into a juice. 

He even got to keep the strawberry DNA in a keepsake capsule.  Now off to create a new fusion fruit!

In addition to all of the booths, tables, seminars, displays, and demos, you could sign up for workshops. 

My son and I attended

    …. one with Ethan Frisch from Burlap and Barrel on where do our cooking spices come from  with lots of spices to smell and taste

    …. a hands-on workshop with Tracie Shaeffer of Twizzles Tasty Treats on how to make delicious truffles and what inspired her to start her own company

    …. an overview of how Dr. Abigail Edgecliffe-Johnson, a confectionery-roboticist and Ph.D. anthropologist, makes cakes using Adruino circuity and tricks to “light up a cake”

Are you noticing the trend here?  We attended all of the food-based workshops to provide further “food for thought” for my budding chef.

But I also signed my son up for a workshop I knew he would love.  It was called the Lovie Monsters: Sewing and Circuitry Workshop.

Both kids and adults filled up this workshop.  Dr. Ronah Harris of Play Pattern taught attendees how to make a keychain Lovie Monster using felt, decorative fabrics, conductive tape, and a LED light and coin battery to light up their newly stuffed creation.

Dr. Harris had tons of fabrics in all colors to inspire attendees to make their own creation and in the end, every Love Monster was unique and expressive of its creator.

My son loves stuffed animals so learning how easy it is to sew his own Lovie Monster has inspired him to make more at home, giving him the opportunity to give family members special creations he will make himself for Christmas gifts.

We had been learning about circuits all weekend, so the Lovie Monster workshop opened his mind further about how circuits could be used in a variety of ways.

Inspire

When my son heard that Kevin Kohler, better known as the Backyard Scientist, was speaking at the show, he couldn’t wait to see him.  Kevin talked about how he wasn’t necessarily excited about his school science classes but was curious to explore things on his own…in his parents’ backyard.

With over 130 experiment videos and 3.5 million subscribers, Kevin has been enchanting young and old minds for 5+ years…including my son who confessed he has watched all of Kevin’s videos!

From setting his family’s pool on fire to creating a hoverboard out of dry ice, Kevin has made a very lucrative living off of his creative and fascinating “what happens if” videos.

The NYC Maker Faire show ended with another pair of “scientists,” known as Eepybird, creating a 100 2-liter Coke and 500 Mentos fountain display to Maker Faire onlookers. 

Like Kevin, these two “scientists” were curious about what would happen if they if they put mentos in a full bottle of coke. 

They recorded it and put it on YouTube, to their surprise, the very next day top news stations across the company were inviting them to be in on their show to talk about it.

That was 12 years ago.  Today they are still going strong.  The display was really cool.  See this video of theirs to get an idea of what we saw.

There’s so much I’d love to show you about what we saw and experienced at the NYC Maker Faire.  Suffice it to say, attending a Maker Faire is a great way for you and your family to play, learn, discover, and be inspired together.