Maker Faire Long Island 2025
Playful Engineers Traveling Maker Space - Chain Reactions & Creative Contraptions
Home: Massachusetts, United States of America
Playful Engineers’ Traveling Maker Space invites problem-solvers of all ages to join us in building, testing, and running a series of incredible, multi-faceted chain reactions. Come build whimsical and creative cause-and-effect machines using everyday materials that we provide - from dominoes and tracks, to balls, blocks, cars, spiralators, zip lines, tetherballs, and gravity-powered carousels. Inspired by Rube Goldberg-style inventions, we encourage open-ended play, teamwork, and joyful experimentation. Drop in and start building a small contraption, or help us build our big one - no experience necessary, just curiosity and creativity! Whether our designs fizzle, flop, fail, or fly, we'll have fun learning and growing as engineers!
https://playfulengineers.com
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Playful Engineers
Playful Engineers is our small arts-in-ed company promoting play-based, curiosity-driven, STEAM-powered learning. Kids learn skills, gain understanding, and build confidence, participating in our hands-on programs. We've presented over 1200 programs in schools, libraries, and camps, since 2015. We help groups build chain reactions, linkage toys, and mechanical automata - making ordinary things move in extraordinary ways, utilizing the most basic "digital" tools - the digits of our hands! We'll come to your town. You provide the engineers and a room to work in, we'll provide everything else!
https://playfulengineers.comWhat Inspired You to Make This?
For 30 years, Playful Engineers founder Jay Mankita worked with kids and families as a touring songwriter, guitarist, and workshop leader. Jay uncovered a new passion for engineering and making things move, when he and his (then 4 years old, now 17) son saw a fantastic Rube Goldberg Machine video. They went into the playroom together, and Jay never came out! Since then, Jay has been playing, building, learning, and teaching chain reactions, mechanical linkages, crank-driven automata, pencil geometry, and all sorts of otherwise artful mechanisms. The company has grown since then, and we're working almost every day, in schools, libraries, camps, and online. Teaching artist Merlin Katz has always loved building, coding, tinkering, playing, and sharing his love of engineering. In 2023 he won a LEGO competition and got a job as a professional LEGO builder. There, and in many other educational programs for the past three years, Merlin has been able to show thousands of kids what they can accomplish through exploration, patience, and play. This is why Playful Engineers was the perfect place for Merlin to go next. As a traveling instructor, Merlin brings his passion for fun and building to the next generation of tinkerers through his work at Playful Engineers.
