We're excited to bring to you the second episode in our special summer kids video miniseries, Sylvia's Super Awesome Mini Maker Show! Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes, download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube, Blip.tv, and Vimeo. By James (TechNinja) and Sylvia Did you know that you can have fun making extended polymer chains at home with household chemicals? You bet you can! Today we're going to make "Crazy Putty!"

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Tom Swift, the original geek-kid/adventurer/maker, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the original copyright this July. The books, over 100 of them, were written by a stable of authors writing as Victor Appleton. All the stories involve the "boy inventor" creating some amazing new bit of technology and having an adventure with it.

Like many inventors, Tom started small: in the inaugural book, he merely modified his motorcycle. But soon he developed a "photo telephone" that predated the fax machine, a giant magnet to rescue a stranded submarine and a "house on wheels" that anticipated the modern motor home.

John Dizer, author of two guides to the Tom Swift phenomenon, summed up the books' early appeal: "If Tom could invent something, so could we. With honesty and hard work, we could harvest the reward for our inventions. We might even become rich. Tom did."

Yes, they're formulaic pulp -- but they show a smart kid taking the initiative to create something cool. Nothing wrong with that! [Thanks, Daniel!]

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I've been a huge fan of typemakers House Industries ever since, well since I was a graphic designer, which was a long time ago. I not only love their font families, mainly "atomic age" retro-modern designs, but a lot of the swag and type-inspired products they increasingly design and sell. Case in point are the Eames House Blocks, a collection of 36 Michigan-grown basswood blocks that allow your little proto-design snobs to recreate Charles and Ray Eames' Case Study No. 8 house and studio, or to use the blocks' colorful letters, numbers, and dingbat designs to build whatever they wish.

OK, so at $175 a set, you might want to just cut, paint, and finish a set of blocks with your own cool designs. The Eames' were on a mission to bring great design to the masses. Prove the mission was a success and craft up an arty set of your own. [Via Dinosaurs and Robots]

Eames House Blocks

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Howtoons has a round-up of five fun and easy summer projects that you and your kids can do, from making ice cream to kite-building to making a simple underwater scope from a soda bottle.

5 Summer Projects

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We're thrilled to announce that July is kid's month on Make: Online. We're constantly getting requests to do more kid-related content and projects, so stay tuned over the coming month for much more of this on the site. We'll have round-ups of our best kid-related coverage so far, in the magazine and here on the site, new kid-friendly projects, and we're even going to invite some kids in to take our places in some of the columns, reviews, and blog postings. Who better to talk about kids and making than young makers?

Young Makers at the Exploratorium

Einstein's Daughters FIRST robotics team

As always, we'd love for you to get involved. Do you have a cool kid-related project you'd like for us to cover? Are you a young person who loves MAKE and would like us to consider some contribution from you? Send us your ideas and we'll see what we can do.

More: Have you seen our Kids section on Make: Online? Lots of fun stuff there already.

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Add your image to the last shuttle missions - NASA Face in Space, via BoJ...

NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps:

First...Select the Participate button at the bottom of this page and upload your image/name, which will be flown aboard the space shuttle. Don't have a picture to upload? No problem, just skip the image upload and we will fly your name only on your selected mission!

Next...Print and save the confirmation page with your flight information.

Later...Return to this site after the landing to print your Flight Certificate - a commemorative certificate signed by the Mission Commander. You can also check on mission status, view mission photographs, link to various NASA educational resources and follow the commander and crew on Twitter or Facebook.

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Tiffany of Art Food and Motherhood shows you how you can decoupage a kid's art table with vintage book images. Isn't it cute? It's the perfect little table for tea parties too. I love that her 4 year old daughter helped her with the project too!

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Fifty Dangerous Thing (You Should Let Your Children Do) is the first book from the people who created Tinkering School. With projects, activities, experiences, and skills ranging from "Superglue Your Fingers Together" to "Play with Fire," along with 48 other great ideas, the book is a manifesto for kids and parents alike to reclaim childhood.

Easy to follow instructions, fun facts, and challenging undertakings that will engage and inspire whole households. Why Fifty Dangerous Things? First off, Five Dangerous Things just weren't enough (although the audience at TED thought it was a good starting point). More importantly, there are many "dangerous" things that are interesting, eye-opening, enlightening or just plain fun! And while there are aspects of danger in virtually everything we do, the trick is to learn how mastery actually minimizes danger.

Most of us learn how to walk without toppling over at a very young age, so that walking is no longer dangerous. Next we learn to negotiate stairs. Why stop there? Why not practice and become proficient at walking on the roof or walking on a tightrope? These are just a few of the Fifty Dangerous Things that we invite you to try. Take a peek and step into a world of danger and discovery. 130 pages

Fifty Dangerous Thing (You Should Let Your Children Do) in the Maker Shed

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The Mechamo Inchworm kit is a creepy/beautiful member of Gakken's Mechanical Animals Series. You can make a mind-blowing remote controlled "Meka-Inchworm" robot with this fun, no-soldering-required kit.

You've got to love a machine that moves like a bug! MAKE is proud to be the exclusive distributor in North America for these brilliant kits.

The Mechamo Inchworm kit is available in the Maker Shed.

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MAKE subscriber sliptonic wrote in with his enhanced pinewood derby car:

I built this car for the open class of my son's Cubscout pinewood derby race. It uses a 9V solenoid to release pressure from a PET bottle. I won, despite a minor design flaw.

The flaw being that the bottle didn't fit under the finish line banner -- but only the nose has to cross the line to win.

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When I visited my cousin last week, his daughter Neeka Mashouf (age 13) and two of her classmates (Nicole Bronstein and Sydney Schonefeld) were deeply engaged in creating a stop-motion animation film for a class project, complete with a homemade stage and camera platform. The assignment was to explain and show examples of Newton's three Laws of Motion in a creative way. They chose clay as their medium and did all their stitching and editing in iMovie. It was fun to hear them talk about their learning process. When they first started, they weren't capturing small enough motions in each frame and the flow was coming out choppy. They went back to the drawing board and this is what they came up with. Way more dynamic than any presentation I remember doing for science class in 8th grade. It's exciting to see what this next generation of makers is crafting.

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This product by Löopa is called the "gyro-bowl," in spite of the fact that, since it does not exploit conservation of angular momentum, there's really nothing "gyroscopic" about it. I haven't purchased, used, been given, been paid to endorse, or otherwise had any first-hand experience of this product, but the idea is certainly clever.

[Thanks, Billy Baque!]

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Join the MAKE team along with Pixar and TechShop for the Young Makers program Saturday (2/27) from 11am to 3pm at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

Our "Meet the Makers" session will begin at 11 am in the McBean Theatre. Our goal is to explore the work of a variety of makers and gain insight into the maker mindset. I will ask some questions, but we hope kids will have their own questions to ask these makers. This program will feature smart fabrics, soft circuits, and wearables. We'll see examples of how electronics is literally being woven into clothing and increasingly incorporated into the world of fashion.

Our featured makers are:

Adrian Freed

Adrian Freed is Research Director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) program at Berkeley. He uses smart materials to teach electronics to kids. He will also talk about how conductive fabrics can enable new ways of making music. (For more, see Adrian Freed's web page)

Grace Kim

A graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, Grace Kim will talk about construction techniques in wearable technology (as in the garment shown above). Her work has been displayed at the Future Fashion Event, at Viaggio Telecom in Pisa, Italy, and the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) in San Francisco. (For more, see Grace Kim's NYU Thesis Project)

Daniela Rosner

A Ph.D student at the I-School at Berkeley, Daniela will talk about recent developments of the Spyn project, which now uses a Nexus One mobile phone to capture the stories people associate with handmade objects. Her work was featured in this article [PDF] from CRAFT magazine. (For more, see Daniela Rosner and Spyn Project).

In the Open MAKE session that follows from 12-3pm, we'll have several hands-on activities on the Exploratorium floor demonstrating "soft" circuits and working with conductive fabric and thread. (We think that these activities are geared toward ages 12 and above but younger kids can participate but might need some additional support from parents.)

Build Your Own Bling - Make simple circuits (LED-battery) for rings, barettes, or pins. Sew-a-circuit - Learn embroidery techniques with inspired by electronic designs.

As I've mentioned previously, the goal of the Young Makers program is to demonstrate to kids different modes of making and encourage them to make things. We also hope the program will develop young makers who exhibit their own work at Maker Faire. Members of the Maker Faire team will also be present. Come by if you have questions about how you, your school or organization can participate in this year's Maker Faire.

Gather your kids and their friends and join us at the Exploratorium this Saturday.

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Michelle Hlubinka, MAKE's Education Director, sent us this announcement about the upcoming Open MAKE Night at the SF Exploratorium:

As part of our ongoing quest to encourage more young people to exercise their innate curiosity and creativity by making things, this Saturday, January 30th, we're kicking off a four-month collaboration with the Exploratorium's Learning Studio, TechShop, and Disney-Pixar.

Our calendar of upcoming themes and makers at the Exploratorium:

January 30th: Bristlebots & Blinkybugs -- Ken Murphy and Windell Oskay & Lenore Edman February 27th: Wearables & Soft Circuitry -- Adrian Freed March 27th: Make Your Own Kind of Music -- Walter Kitundu and Krys Bobrowski April 24th: Motors & Mechanisms -- Brad Prether and Ernie Fosselius

Each Saturday we meet follows a simple schedule:

11:00 Dale Dougherty interviews makers in the McBean Theatre 12:30 Featured makers and hands-on making on the museum floor 3:00 Events end

It's a first experiment in a new program we call Young Makers, in which we intend to create an infrastructure to nurture kids who want to learn by making, beyond what they can do with construction kits. We hope to fulfill a dire need: satisfying a little bit of what shop classes used to do before they, lamentably, started getting booted out of schools. The idea behind Young Makers is to create a community, both on-line and physical, that brings together like-minded kids, adult mentors, and fabrication facilities -- those who love to build and to learn by making. The role of the mentors is to help young people find a project vision if they don't already have one, and then to help them realize that vision. Along the way mentors will expose the underlying math, science, and engineering principles behind the projects, teach tool usage and safety, and collectively all participants -- youth and mentors alike -- will create a collaborative culture of innovation and experimentation. The Maker Faire becomes the deadline, and offers a stage for the resulting projects to be exhibited and explained. Monthly meetings will be used to build the kind of collaborative culture we feel is crucial to the program. Namely, a culture that embraces failure, encourages cross-disciplinary projects that meld math, science, technology, and art, and a culture that is both open-ended and open-minded.

We feel the Young Makers program distinguishes itself in several ways from other programs such as robotics competitions and science fairs. In particular, there are no winners and losers, and the projects are open-ended and child driven. Moreover, there are very few boundaries -- just like the Maker Faire, anything that is cool is fair game.

(Thanks to Tony DeRose of Pixar for the writeup about the program, from which I've borrowed liberally.)

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The folks at Sparkle Labs have put up a cute project on their site. It's a simple LED circuit on a breadboard (built with their Discover Electronics Kit), with some Turkey papercraft attached, to create a Thanksgiving table decoration. This is a great way to get your kids involved in a basic electronics project that becomes part of the holiday festivities (er... for those of you in the States).

Thanksgiving LED Turkey centerpiece project

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My local library picked up on the festive trend of Cardboard Tube Fighting. The Boston Globe covered the preparations:

The group discovered cardboard tube fighting last summer in time to incorporate a bit of it into a presentation on Greek mythology at a reading program party.

The weapons are cylindrical pieces of thick cardboard about 4 feet long. The appeal, explains young-adult librarian Ellen Snoeyenbos: "It's totally ridiculous.''

As word of mock combat with reliably harmless weaponry spread among the town's youthful warriors, Snoeyenbos and the Bookmarks seized on the fund-raiser as a chance to exploit their discovery of the fighting fad made popular by YouTube.

Saturday's event will feature one-on-one tournaments, guild-on-guild skirmishes (up to 10 fighters per team), "and an all-out battle for possession of the Royal Crown,'' according to the club.

They've gathered hundreds of tubes, and youth of all ages are uparmoring in a pulpy way.

More: Cardboard Tube Fighting League

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Mark Frauenfelder and Dan Woods got sent this letter about the latest issue of MAKE, Volume 20. We got the sender's permission to post it here:

Mark and Dan,

This is Jim Kelly, the freelance tech writer in Atlanta. Hope you guys are doing well.

Just wanted to write and tell you how impressed and inspired I am with issue 20 of MAKE magazine. The interview (and foreword) with Adam Savage was extremely fun to read. As a father of a 2.5 year old, I too am anxious to encourage my son to explore, take apart, design, and enjoy the creative process.

Issue 20 was directed at kids, and I think you hit the bullseye, with force behind it. I hope this issue is one of your bestselling ones, and I for one am encouraging parents I know to pick up a copy. I'm also purchasing a few extra copies for some teachers I know.

My son just got done watching me configure my new CNC machine to mill out some fun designs on wood; his eyes could not have opened any wider. I wish all kids could have access to this level of technology and machinery, but unfortunately, our school systems seem to be cutting shop class and art projects and focusing time and money on standardized test-taking skills... how unfortunate.

To bring this all home, I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is such a demand for material/content that encourages our youth that a void has been created and cannot be filled fast enough. MAKE is in a unique spot to develop something that goes a little beyond the Maker Shed and the quarterly magazine. Maybe it's a subscription-based activity website, with monthly special projects broken down into categories such as "Do It Yourself" (no parents required), "Dad and Me" (or "Mom and Me" - projects with the parents), and more. Maybe it's a special magazine (like your Halloween special issue) that focuses on even more kid-friendly content. Or maybe a mixture of projects and inspirational interviews (Dean Kamen comes to mind) in a book format.

I'll wrap this up by saying that I, Jim Kelly, hate the three month wait between issues of MAKE... I read every issue over and over again. I'm starved for this type of content. And I'm an adult - imagine what those kids who have this creative streak inside them must feel? They're in need of something... not sure what... and maybe you guys can figure out what to offer them. Issue 20 could easily be just the tip of the iceberg.

Take care,

Jim Kelly

Thanks for your thoughts and kind words, Jim. Reaching the educational market, be it home-schooling parents or teachers in grade school and college, is an increasing focus of ours. We see the new Make: Science Room as part of that effort. We also have the Make: Education social network to reach out to educators and and to create a place where they can network with each other. We've also been working on a dynamic new project-based program of making and mentoring designed to raise the next generation of makers. We're developing this with some very innovative, high-profile partners and are very excited about the prospects. Stay tuned -- we'll be making an announcement about this in the next few months and looking for some kids to participate in a pilot program.

We'd also like to point out that there is something to tide maker parents, kids, and educators over between issues of the magazine: this website, Make: Online! Over the past year, we've been adding much more original content, regular columns, weekly projects, guest authors, and special programs. And then there are our regular Weekend Project podcasts, and special videos, like Collin Cunningham's MAKE Presents series, and Marc de Vinck's how-to and kit build videos. There's a lot going on here, so we hope you're getting your daily dose of MAKE from us. If there's anything else you'd like to see us do here to satisfy your MAKE fix, please let us know. We're always looking for ways to expand and improve the site.

From the pages of MAKE:

Want to know how to build a hydrogen rocket? How about a laser light show in a lunchbox? Or a simple remote-controlled videocam car? Or maybe you want to go old-school and build a wooden mini sailboat or toy car launcher? All this and tons more, plus revealing photos of Adam Savage's maker childhood, can all be found in MAKE, Volume 20, "For Kids of All Ages." Get your individual copy in the Maker Shed, or subscribe now.

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Nice collection for the kiddos...

Happy Halloween! October 31st is one of the best days of the year. Not only do you get to devour candy all day, you also get to be anything while doing it!!! Forget about the thrills and chills, there is no trickery here. This year we are setting out to get you as much candy as possible, so check out these sweet costumes

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This fascinating piece, from This American Life (animated by Chris Ware), tells the story of an elementary school where a couple of kids made a TV camera out of cardboard and tempera paint. Soon, the cardboard camera craze went viral and it seemed like every kid was either a camera operator, an anchor, or some other faux TV production person. Then things went positively post-modern.

Chris Ware animation of This American Life story

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The conker The "conker" is the fruit of the horse-chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum).  Not actually a chestnut (conkers are, in fact, slightly toxic), it has been an important commercial tree, with uses as broad as raw materials for explosives to providing deep shade to keep beer-gardens coo...By: Kiteman