There’s a lot of good stuff going on this coming weekend, but there’s one event in particular I highly recommend clearing some time for: The Big Build at the National Building Museum.
On Saturday from 10am to 4pm, the annual festival will give budding builders an opportunity to start honing their skills as they work alongside professionals, including architects, designers, builders, artisans, and trades people. The Great Hall will be full of different work stations where guests of all ages aren’t just welcome, but encouraged, to try their hands at all kinds of construction techniques.
We are big fans of The Big Build, having been a few times over the years. It’s one of those events where kids (and grown-ups!) can spend hours engaged in various activities and discovering new things. We’ve built sculptures from pipes, carved stones, practiced spackling, created mosaic tiles, learned how to use a variety of tools, and so much more.
The interactive building fun continues this year with plenty of ways guests can get their build on. They can climb aboard cranes and tractors, build a brick wall and a log cabin, plant a tree and autumn plants, carve stone, compete in a nail driving contest, and create a hardware wind chime to take home. And new this year are a scavenger hunt, a chance to create a sidewalk chalk cityscape, a children’s play, and a book reading and signing of Urban Animals of Washington, D.C. by author Isabel Hill.
To top it all off, there are always goodies to bring home, too. Along with crafts they design, guests can pick up “hard” hats (they’re actually plastic), stickers, and other building-themed tokens from the day.
The Big Build takes place this Saturday, September 21, from 10am to 4pm. Admission is free. For more information, visit the National Building Museum website.
