Celebrating Robots

To wrap up mini-maker week at The Children’s Museum in Easton, innovator and designer Steve Norris was our special guest maker who helped us celebrate robots! 

 Steve brought three robots for the kids to interact with; Huey, Frank, and Butler-Bot.

Huey: Color chasing robot

Butler-Bot: robot made from a trashcan

Frank: Face-detecting robot

• Huey is a color chasing robot, which is attracted to the color orange.  Kids got to hold up an orange piece of paper as Huey followed them wherever they went. 
• Frank is a face detecting robot, who recognizes the kid’s faces as they stand in front of it.  
• Lastly, Butler-Bot is the robot made from a trashcan who was roaming the floor for almost two hours straight.  Butler-Bot was also featured in the latest Transformers Movie!  Steve spent a week on the set and had an amazing experience, he said that he never thought his hobby would take him this far.            

Steve Norris is a software programmer and a writer for Robot Magazine.  Writing for the magazine is Steve’s favorite hobby, where he gets to write every two months about the robots he builds.  He has built 44 in total, one every two months, and has written in the magazine for just about all of them. 

Scribble-Bots

Kids making their scribble-bots

The children also got the opportunity to make their own scribble-bots!  These scribble-bots were made out of simple household items including the motor from the inside of an electrical toothbrush. For instrucions on how to make your own, click here to visit the Exploritorium website!  The kids got to watch their robots come to life as they made cool designs scribbling all over the paper.  Steve loves to inspire people into getting involved in science and technology, so watching the kids in awe as they designed their own robots was a great experience for us and him.  To check out more amazing creations from Mini Maker week, look for our blog post about textle artist Rhona Fazio!

Learn Duct Tape Crafts with Jake!

Jake Lane is twelve years old and in the sixth grade. Jake has an amazing talent that can be seen at the Children’s Museum in Easton. This tremendous talent gives him the artistic ability to make objects and different art work with duct tape. How did he get inspired to pursue this kind of art? Jake says that when he was in Boy Scout camp all of the other boys were using duct tape and he thought it looked really cool and lots of fun. He then decided to go on you tube and find videos on duct tape and the different colors you can use.

Jake spent his first summer with the museum's CIT (Counselor in Training) program. This program is designed to educate children into becoming future camp counselors. Jake is the son of Donna and James Lane. Donna is a very much respected former museum board of director. Even though Donna has left this position, her family is very active with the museum. Their other son James is also a CIT. Jake works very well at the museum says staff members. This talented young man has decorated stairs, stools, and bins. He has also created wallets, whips, money clips, business card holders, lanyards, bracelets, check book holders, flip flops, neck ties, phone holders and flowers all out of duct tape! How to make a duct tape wallet