We brought our science and engineering activities to the faire.

The Works Museum recently participated in the second Minneapolis/St. Paul Mini Maker Faire, a one-day festival which showcased the work of 100 local and regional makers at the State Fairgrounds. We were happy to be asked to be one of the presenters at this year’s Maker Faire. Our tent was alive with kids (and parents!) exploring engineering with the three activities we provided: Magnet Bridges, Rainbow Glasses, and stabile construction. A group of kids stayed almost 2 hours creating an extremely strong and tall magnet pyramid! We saw all kinds of creative constructions with our stabile sculpture activity, developed by our own STEM Educator, Suzanne Bailey. To all our visitors, thanks for joining us for a day of discovery, play, and fun. Thank you to Leonardo’s Basement for hosting this fabulous event.

What is a “maker” and what does it have to do with engineering for kids?

From the Maker Faire MSP website: “Maker is a term used to cover a wide range of creative work, projects and hobbies. If you are a tinkerer, coder, woodworker, crafter, farm hacker, artist, student, designer, chemist, roboticist, entrepreneur, scientist, food inventor, metalworker, educator, green technology creator, inventor, corporate designer or bicycle builder, you are a maker!” Makers range from tech enthusiasts to crafters to homesteaders to scientists to garage tinkerers. They are of all ages and backgrounds. The aim of Maker Faire is to entertain, inform, connect and grow this community, and we definitely felt the kindred spirits in attendance at the Faire. Young engineers love to build stuff with real tools, and experiment to make things bigger, better, faster, stronger, more useful. Engineers take craft to the next level to try to solve problems and invent new things. Engineers are also makers!

What events will The Works Museum participate in next?

Look for us at the Maker Faire again next year. For more exciting maker activities hosted by The Works Museum this summer and during the school year, view our summer camps and school break camps pages on our website. We are located in the Twin Cities area, in Bloomington, Minnesota. Our camps are great ways to let kids explore and learn while having fun at times when school is not in sessions. Check out our events page to see any upcoming event days or science and technology fairs hosted by us at our Museum. Planning a visit to the Museum soon? See our summer hours.