If tinkering with Legos and Play-dough is a pastime of your child, then the new exhibit at the Children’s Museum may be a great way for them to spend the day.
How People Make Things is a new installation at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Running through February, the exhibit features hands-on activities to show children how products are manufactured. Hands-on experience allows visitors to create actual products using equipment from the factories.
“This exhibit brings children close to the real stuff, the nuts and bolts of how products are manufactured, which is very easy to feel removed from these days,” says Jane Werner, the executive director of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh’s Mister Rogers, who featured a factory tour segment on his show, inspired the series.
The exhibit takes the complex engineering of manufactured items and makes it accessible to children. Visitors have the opportunity to use a vacuum former to make a bowl, assemble parts of a golf cart, and a die cutter to make a box.
Locally made products are also featured, with a display of 10,000 Crayola Crayons and an “exploded” bicycle from Cannondale Bicycle Corporation.
Children can also witness live demonstrations from professions in the “Meet the Makers” segments, like a wool spinner on Dec. 17-18.
For a complete list, visit the museum website.
Admission for the museum is $11 for children and $12 for adults.
By Karin Baker
(Photos by Kelsey Shea)
