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Health & Fitness

Making Things with Maker Camp and DIY Clubs

Our first day of school was yesterday and I can safely recap the most amazing Summer of Making Things.

WackyCapNTrish are planning a trip from San Francisco to Long Beach.  We call it the Finding and Making Things Game (The F.A.M.T.G.). We're going to be busy finding folks who make things... We'll call them Makers... and making things of our own to show.  You can help us to do this by voting for us daily!

For me, it was a summer of Firsts.


First Maker Camp

Around the world, teens were making things at virtual and real Maker Camps.  The Maker community is very strong in the Bay Area, as San Mateo was the location of the first Maker Faire many moons ago.  In Southern California, there were just a few locations.  The Exploratory in Culver City, a few in Orange County and San Diego, and one in Long Beach.

The Cultural Alliance of Long Beach was pleased to host Long Beach's first Maker Camp.  The beneficiaries of the Maker Camp care package from Maker Media were several children of members of a Mother's group which meets at the Cultural Alliance. They played with conductive dough (squishy circuits), made flags with Lumi dyes, made balloon powered LEGO cars, became part of the music with the Makey Makey, took a look at a Bukobot 3D printer and  made and used cool LEGO Education and LEGO Technics kits.  And yes, they even made Flute Salad.

First DIY Club Summer

It was a summer of mechanics, electronics, movement and more at the Long Beach Sea Base with the DIY Clubs.  The varied topics included Karakuri (paper automata), Electronics, Robotics, geocacheing and LEGO.  The program ended with the group partially supporting a LEGO fan booth at the Orange County Mini Maker Faire, Minecraft themed LEGO science (with Shared Science) and a wrap party at the Long Beach Sea Base and Aquatics Center.

LEGO, LEGO, LEGO

LEGO projects got some prime time at the Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach (awesome comic book store) and Great Educational Experiences (homeschool provider) with the kids competing for prizes in the first (hopefully annual) LEGO Build contest held by the Long Beach fan group, LBAFOL.  Prizes and playbrick for the in person build sessions were kindly donated by The LEGO Group through Community Coordinator Kevin Hinkle.

Thanks to judge Norbert LaBuguen who is a longtime fan of the LEGO Brick.  I will tell you more about Norbert tomorrow.

There's still time to enter!  More information on the contest theme and a link to the rules can be found here.  US entries only please.

I'm so excited about my trip to the Bay Area! Please Vote for me!

About the Author
Trish Tsoiasue is a Patch Blogger from Long Beach, CA.  She is planning a trip to the Bay Area, so that she can find people who make things and places that they make things to feature on a Patch blog near her or near you, on her Squigglemom YouTube channel and on her reality show that she is getting ready to launch with Caprice Rothe (Hands of E.T.)
on new channel WackyCapNTrish. Subscribe now to see our first show when it's ready!

She is figuring out how to increase her internet reach so that she can get folks to like their Facebook page: WackyCapNTrish. Please like us and tell us if you want us to visit you on our trip!

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