MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE

Children's Museum of Houston debuts Mister Rogers’-inspired How People Make Things exhibit

May 23, 2009

Sponsored by Apache Corporation and CGGVeritas

Every object in our world has a story of how it is made. How People Make Things, a new exhibit opening at the Children's Museum of Houston on May 23, tells that story by linking familiar childhood objects to a process of manufacturing that combines people, ideas and technology.

How People Make Things, inspired by the factory tour segments from the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood television series, offers hands-on activities using real factory tools and machines to create objects with four manufacturing processes - molding, cutting, deforming and assembly. Many common manufactured products help tell the story of how people, ideas and technology transform raw materials into finished products.

Visitors can use a die cutter to make a box and a horse, operate a 3-axis mill to carve a block of wax, assemble parts of a real golf cart and race a robotic arm to see who assembles a replica of the signature trolley from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood faster.

Step into the Main Office, where you can don coveralls, lab coats, aprons, safety glasses, and hard hats to become a factory technician, worker or supervisor. You can also mold pourable wax, explore vacuum forming and injection molding and match products to the mold from which they were made. Or play the “People in Your Neighborhood" matching game, developed with The Saturday Light Brigade radio program, where audio clues and stories help you match the person to the object they make.

“This exhibit brings children close to the real stuff, the nuts and bolts of how products are manufactured, which is very easy to feel removed from these days,” says Keith Ostfeld, Director of Exhibit Development at the Children’s Museum of Houston. “When kids operate the 3-axis mill and the die cutter, issues of design, engineering and function in everyday items become very real. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!”

“Through his factory tours, Fred Rogers took complex issues and made them simple and direct so children could understand them and relate them to their own lives. He made manufacturing fascinating and inspirational, and we continue that tradition with How People Make Things.”

The factory tour videos from the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood television series featured in the exhibit depict the making of crayons, carousel horses, balls, stop lights, quarters, shoes, toy cars and toy wagons.

Everyday products featured in How People Make Things include 10,000 Crayola crayons in 90 colors, 10,000 plastic pellets, 300 ice cream cups, stop lights, cooking pans, sneakers, baseball bats, baseball mitts and matchbox cars.

ABOUT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF HOUSTON

Rated a 5-star nationwide children's museum by Citysearch.com, voted “Ultimate Kid-Friendly Attraction” in a Houston Chronicle readers poll, and tied for the nation’s best children’s museums No. 1 spot in Child magazine, the Children's Museum is dedicated to transforming communities through innovative, child-centered learning. It houses 14 new exhibit galleries of innovative bilingual learning programs for kids ages birth to 12 years. The Children’s Museum is located at 1500 Binz in Houston’s Museum District.

Admission is $7 per person and $6 for seniors 65 years and older. Children under one and Museum Members receive free admission. Free Family Nights are offered Thursdays from 5 to 8 p.m. courtesy of The Wortham Foundation, Inc. and Kathrine McGovern and the late John P. McGovern, M.D. Two for one admission days on Sunday (only) will be offered Memorial Day through Labor Day courtesy of Target.

Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from Noon to 6 p.m. For more information, please visit www.cmhouston.org or call (713) 522-1138. Closed Mondays, except most Federal holidays and during H.I.S.D. winter and spring breaks. Open Mondays during the summer months from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

ABOUT HOW PEOPLE MAKE THINGS

How People Make Things was created by Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in collaboration with Family Communications, Inc. (FCI), the producer of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE). The exhibit was made possible with support from the National Science Foundation and The Grable Foundation.