It all started with a bear on a unicycle. As one of the activities for this month’s toy theme, the classic “Ernest the Bear” inspired us to work with visitors, helping them create their own balancing toys. We first spent some time messing about with ribbon spools, washers, and wire to create Ernest-like pieces that could travel up and down a length of string. After a few afternoons in our workshop heading down that road, we decided as a group that it would be more fruitful to simplify the goals and focus on building stationary balancing objects with corks, wire, feathers, puff balls, washers and other assorted materials.

For the Open:Make event, Sebastian and Antonio built a beautiful organic wooden sculpture so that people could place their own balancing objects on a special perch and leave them there to inspire others. We liked how visitors could easily have a feeling of quick success in getting something to balance. But many others made their toys more complicated both with small adjustments that affected stability as well as by adding personalized elements to their creations.

We tried the activity one more time out on the floor the next week. This time, we added some of the leftover fingerlings from the DIY potato head machine to the materials set. On an afternoon without all the distractions of the other open:make activities, people spent a longer amount of time, making even more complicated balancing sculptures with decorations on both the bases and the weights.

As we continue to work on this new activity, I’m interested in exploring different types of designs (maybe emulating the plastic toy bird that balances on it’s beak), expanding the material set and finding interesting ways to display the creations in the tinkering studio for a longer period. We’ll keep playing around with this idea in the last few days of the month of toy explorations and hopefully beyond.

This time, as a part of our activity we provided jigs for creating automata frames. Do you see the line on the block?

Visitors choose a jig and put wire along the line to make a frame structure like this.

We made jigs with different sizes and structures to make various wire automata.

Providing the jigs definitely helps visitors to get started making their wire contraptions. Also, while visitors work with the jigs, they become used to bending wire and using new tools such as pliers and soldering pens.

What I liked about this activity is that parents also spent a long time at the workshop table with us. Some parents helped their kids making the wire contraptions, and others worked parallel to the kids making their own. In both cases, the highlights were to see the moments that their wire contraptions worked for the first time. Once they saw their automata mechanism working, they started making figures or objects to give motions.

Interestingly, the motions could be changed dramatically depending on many factors such as the radius of the crankshaft, the weight of the object, the length of the rod, the distance between the crankshaft and the anchor point, etc., so continuous tweaking was also necessary to keep the mechanism working. Visitors spent about one hour and a half to finish their projects and all seemed to be very happy with their creations: new toys!

Here are some examples of visitor’s creations at Open MAKE.

You can see the movements vary depending on the directions of the shaft, though they all used the same shape of crank.

What I REALLY enjoyed while doing this activity was seeing unique structures that visitors came up with, without using our jigs. Walter’s friend, Siobhan, started drawing a sketch on the table and spent some time for her own design. A while later, I got really excited with what she was holding in her hands.

Look, she made a kinetic wire flower!

Here is the video of her wire flower blooming.

Running out of time, her exploration with the flower blooming mechanism ended there, but I hope her project will continue even after Open MAKE. As a facilitator, it was really exciting to see her attempts. Due to the complexity of automata, providing jigs is one way to do the activity, but it tends to be step-by-step and people might end up finishing their projects by just following the steps. I would like to experiment more doing activities with or without jigs.

Marek Michaloswki makes the keepon robot and other beatbots.

I-Wei Huang makes steam powered vehicles and designs skylander characters.

emiko oye and Shana Astrachan make jewelry out of old parts from toys and games.

Nathan Sawaya makes sculptures with legos.

At the Open MAKE: Toys event this past Saturday, we had an excellent time working with young makers from the local community. We led activities making tops, scribbling with robots, balancing toys, personalizing name badges, exploring kaleidoscopes, dissecting toys and more. Dale Dougherty from Make Magazine also interviewed Featured Makers emiko oye, Shana Astrachan, Marek Michalowski, I-Wei Huang, and Nathan Sawaya.

Make sure to come back next month as we explore Time!

Here are the first batch of photos taken at our first open make event of the year.

Ever wonder what to do with those random small toy parts too dear to toss but no longer any fun? Learn how to revitalize old toys into bangles, earrings and brooches by utilizing basic jewelry techniques. We will show you how to approach jewelry making with alternative materials and simple craft tools. Participants are encouraged to bring small plastic and rubber toy parts to work with or contribute. All ages welcome; especially great for families.

Please note: Space will be limited, and participation on a first-come-first-served basis, so come early to secure a spot!

Using just these simple materials, our group and kids who’ve come to the museum have thought up lots of different designs. Thin cardboard can be cut into shapes or wrapped around stems to make dense spirals. Skewers can be used to extend the base and move weight to the outside of the top. And as we proved with the tape top, masking tape is a versatile building material in its own right.

I wanted to collect and share a variety of designs that have worked well to show how many different ways people have approached the challenge of making a working top.

This top uses the wrapped cardboard method with part of a Sprite box providing decoration on the outside layer.

This one spins like an umbrella with the cardboard and masking tape body up top.

The skewer sticks in this top spread out the weight of the washers.

And each has it’s own beautiful way of moving across the table when spun. Here’s a video of these three homemade tops built in the tinkering studio. We’ll be making and sharing more tops in the next week leading up to the open:MAKE toys event next Saturday, Jan. 21st.