Lifestyles

Arlo and Delia Petrus, a Regent Square brother-and-sister duo, lose themselves in their craft project as they carefully cut out shapes from colored paper, glue feathers and foam shapes onto the pieces, then attach everything to metal sticks mounted on wooden slabs.

What are the tots doing? "We're making robots," says Arlo, 2.

He and Delia, who is 5, were participating in the Design-A-Bot program, one of many hands-on, artsy projects offered by Citiparks' Roving Art Cart, a children's program celebrating is 35th anniversary.

"This is a really good program," says Darrell Kinsel, 23, of Park Place. He's a child development specialist who took the Petrus kids to Frick Park last week for Art Cart, while baby-sitting them.

"They're here rain or shine. It's just perfect to come down, do a few activities and go home," Kinsel says. "It's excellent."

The Roving Art Cart -- which retired the literal cart in the mid-'80s -- brings several tents filled with art activities, including painting and clay projects, to Pittsburgh city parks and playgrounds. The cart, which serves an average of 8,000 to 9,000 children every year in its summer program, visits one site on most weekdays in the summer, plus some weekend communitywide festivals and citywide special events throughout the year.

Kids get a great opportunity to exercise their creativity, which they don't always get at school, organizers say.

"We don't care if you make a mess," says Nancy Burns, program manager of Citiparks' Office of Special Programs.

Citiparks staff members -- like Darla Albarano, 26, who graduated from Carlow University with an elementary education degree -- man the Art Cart tents, and help guide the kids in their projects.

"I think that it is a time for the kids to shine," Albarano says. "If you give kids a paintbrush and paint, you don't have to tell them what to make. They just go for it."

The Design-A-Bot projects come from a joint venture between Art Cart and "Robot 250," a program launching this month as part of the "Pittsburgh 250" celebration. Sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and several local foundations, "Robot 250" gives people the opportunity to explore robotics and make their own robots.

In the Design-A-Bot projects, kids decorate the bare bot rods, and members of the staff attach the finished bots to power boxes at the next event. The robots can gauge lighting, sound and even humidity, and respond by moving, once they are connected to the power source. Participants love it, staff member Christine Schneider says.

"It's not just kids; it's kids and parents -- everybody," says Schneider, 19, an elementary education major at Duquesne University. "It's kind of introducing them to what the world will look like."

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