Making Family Fun
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The Typical Dad is always looking for some fun family activities. Recently, we loaded up the family and a friend and went to the Kansas City Maker Faire. Don’t know what a Maker Faire is? It was originally started by Make Magazine and is a celebration of people making things. Their tag line is “A Festival of Invention and Creativity.” Essentially, is a place for people who make physical things to get together, share ideas and maybe even sell some of their creations.
Kansas City’s Maker Faire is held at Union Station. This is beautiful, historic location was built and 1914 and completed a renovation in 1999. It’s a good location as you can also take the family to visit their rotating and permanent exhibitions. There also many restaurants around for taking a quick break.
I can’t even begin to list everything at Maker Faire, but we saw robots, Legos, crafts, food, Tesla coils, low-riders, and hand-made musical instruments. You couldn’t walk 30 feet without running into a 3D printer. On top of this we saw Pirates and Iron Man! How much better can it get.
My wife works with teeth, so it was cool to see the Art Car ChewBru. There were high-school groups that had built robots. The robots were designed to throw Frisbees or move rings from one post to another. I even saw Lego robots that could bowl. For all of our worrying about the youth of today, I saw plenty of evidence that we will be just fine.
The whole family had a good time. We will probably go back next year. I didn’t cover even half of the things that happened at Maker Faire, but it is inspiring to see what many people in your community are making and maybe if the Typical Dad ever finds extra time, I can start a few of my own cool projects.
The Typical Dad