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GREENSBORO — If you needed additional evidence of North Carolina’s changing economy, it’s on display at the Greensboro Children’s Museum.

There, in a new temporary exhibit, children can learn about some of the essentials of manufacturing — forming, molding, cutting, assembling.

It’s not the kind of exhibit that likely would have occurred to a museum director a generation ago.

But in an age when manufacturing jobs are vanishing, either from automation or from being sent overseas, it’s a way for children to understand how things are made.

“It’s trying to show children that things aren’t just handed to you on a shelf, that there are people behind the making of everything,” said Beth Lynch, the museum’s chief operating officer.

And in fact, even with the decline in manufacturing, we still need people to make things and run machines here, she said.

On Saturday, one of those people was 6-year-old Austin Melton of Kernersville.

He carefully poured melted wax into a mold and then waited patiently for his creation to cool. He seemed pleased with the results — a spoon — but didn’t mind tossing it back to be reused.

Austin’s father, Charlie Melton, was impressed.

“It’s neat that they can actually see how stuff gets made, to know it doesn’t just appear,” he said.

The exhibit is designed to be hands-on. Children flatten pennies, use a die to cut shapes, even assemble a small car that is carefully stripped down at the beginning of each day.

In addition to the temporary exhibit, the museum has been showcasing various skills and trades each Saturday.

This Saturday featured Katy Torney of Pleasant Garden — and a llama.

Torney demonstrated the uses of wool, shearing it from the animal and spinning it into yarn.

For children, there is a moment as they work with the wool when the light comes on: Ah, the wool comes from the animal, and you work with it, and it becomes a scarf, a sweater, a blanket.

“Then they get it,” Torney said, adding that the idea of children working with a spinning wheel at a young age, as they often did, also resonates. “Then it kind of clicks — 'Oh, that would be my job.’ ”

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jason.hardin@news-record.com