16 Tech Machyne and Purdue Extension Marion County (PEMC) hosted their first family night event on December 12, 2021. Roughly four 4-H families and fifteen participants from a community partner, Groundwork Indy, attended the event.
Participants were treated to lunch and a tour of the Makerspace and project examples. They then had the opportunity to work on an activity themselves, which was building a small wooden sliding pencil box. Participants also had the option to use a wood burning tool to personalize their pencil box.
The purpose of the family night event was to host an event that offers multigenerational programming between parents and their children who may already participate in educational opportunities at Machyne or are interested in participating in educational opportunities in the future.
When asked if family night will be a recurring event at Machyne, Kody Orr, 4-H STEAM Education Coordinator at PEMC said, "We hope to make family events an opportunity to engage families and to be offered at least three times this year. We are working hard to expand our community partnerships to engage more youth, so currently there are no individual sign-up opportunities outside of our public events (such as family events.) We hope to change this in the near future so every third or fourth Saturday of the month is open time to come and work on personal projects, with our resources bridging the knowledge and cost gap that may accompany membership to a makerspace.
If you're interested in attending events at Machyne, please contact Kody Orr (orr10@purdue.edu,) 4-H STEAM Educator who primarily works at Machyne or sign up for the 4-H newsletter here.
