Hands on Stories

Listen, look, and build. We offer a whole library of projects to help our students get in touch with famous stories.

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House of Straw, Sticks or Bricks

Construct a basic shelter. Choose walls and roof. Consider what materials are available where. Build a family. Consider the problems your walls will protect them from: rain, snow, heat, fire, winds, floods, mice, bugs or wolves.

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Bugs and a Bug House

What's the best way to understand a bug? Look at it carefully.

First build your own bug collection house.Then consider the parts of a bug. Six legs, eyes, abdomen, antennae, wings (or not), spiracles, color to hide (or not). Study models and pictures and construct your own bug to understand the names and purposes of the parts.

Then, with your magnifying glass, study your gently caught bugs before you release them. See how your bug stacks up to the real thing.

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Measure Mobile

Sand, assemble and decorate the wheels, axles, chassis and driver of a wooden downhill racer. Then experiment. Measure the distance it travels from the end of its track. Change the pitch of the track and measure again. Change the weight of the car and measure again. An intro to numbers as the voice of science.

Tracks and measuring tools provided for each class. Special thanks: Anderson Tool, Lynn Ladder.

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Block Heads

We build to discover ourselves. Common arms, legs, heads and feet can be shaped, assembled and decorated to create the infinite variety that we are. Blockheads can tell stories, reenact history, represent heroes, display the costumes of distant lands or unleash imagination. A universal tool for learning.

We welcome your ideas for a BlockHead progam: a fable, a hero, a robot, a leader.

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Xylophone

Use eyes and hands to count and sort the wooden bars to build this six note percussion instrument. Build manual dexterity and order memory to string it together with spacers between each bar. Number each bar from 1 to 6, use letters, or use color to code the bars. Then learn to play familiar tunes with the music book that matches the numbering system.

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Weather Man

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows…to paraphrase a favorite songwriter, but it does take some learning and some practice to understand the 4 cardinal directions, N, E, S,W and how the direction of the wind affects our weather.

Weather affects everything we do. Build a weather man with a wind vane at his back. When the wind turns him on his spinning base, look at the compass you've embedded and know which direction the wind is coming from. Learn to look at clouds and cloud patterns. What do they mean?

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Flying Pulleys

Sometimes you have to strip away all the non-essential parts to see an idea at work. Neil Downie proposes a clever study of the exchange of speed for force. A second array of pulleys float between input pulleys and the output pulley. An elegant display of force in motion.

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Dynabrolly

Looking at wave forms at different speeds and the effect of weight, air friction and gravity. As the speed changes, see the different number of waves traveling around the edge of the cloth.

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The Whitney Relay

The Whitney Relay is a set of interconnectable parts that lets students master the art and science of energy transfer in the tradition of the Rube Goldberg Machine or its contemporary Japanese masterpiece: the Pythagoras Switch. Each student receives 5 ramps, 8 marbles, 6 blocks, and assorted parts to construct a chain reaction that could include your whole class. Thoughtful lessons in mechanics, invention and teamwork.

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Whitney Animator

Learn the anatomy of animation and the phenomenon of persistence of vision by building a praxinoscope. With a teacher's resource guide by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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Catapult

Explore the ancient and challenging mechanics of catapults. Rubber bands power this model. Safe for people and places when used with the ping pong ball provided. Make Happy Birds and fling them with accuracy.

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Reversing Switch & Buggy

A battery's current flows in one direction. Clever arrangement of switches can reverse that direction. Construct a controller with a battery, motor and ultralight buggy which can go forward or backward. Learn wiring logic, precision, and trouble shooting.

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Violin

Construct a two string instrument and a bow. Devise experiments to modify pitch and tone and volume. Consider the variables of materials, tension, touch and your own dexterity... all experiments measured by ear.

Experiment with water and tuning to "see" the sound.

Designed in consultation with John Miller, Yale School of Music & the New Haven Public Schools. You can see photos and videos of schools where the Yale School of Music has enhanced the EWM violin program at http://musicians.yale.edu/musicinschools/Eli_Whitney_Violin_Program1.

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Camera Obscura

A complete light laboratory in a box. Construct a box that captures and focuses images. Use it as a camera obscura...an artist's drawing tool. Or make it into a model of the eye. Then rearrange the elements. Direct a light source on an image inside the box to project the image into a darkened room – recreate one of Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest leaps of invention: a projector..
(embedded task materials available.)

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Mill

The Mill is the complex integration of simple machines.

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Slave Ship

Two hundred years ago, congress outlawed American ships’ transporting slaves. Slave trading did not stop. Even Connecticut’s ports were linked to this deadly commerce. Construct a slave ship printed with a powerful image that helped overturn this abuse. Learn the math and maps and misery of this trade.

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Vibrocraft

Build a vibrating motor block that will drive the Vibrocraft scampering around the room. Experiment with different kinds of 'feet' to discover just which work best for the desired results. An introduction to the art of experiment. Begin to understand friction and get some control.

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ElectriCITY v2012

Switch on understanding. Construct a battery pack. Test it. Connect a simple switch Test it. Install an incandescent light. Test it. Then experiment with other challenges.... Lessons in electricity and thinking.

Including a new green LED circuit.

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Machine Design

Experiment with mechanical movement: use cams and wheels to change the speed, direction and shape of motion. Invent applications for motions: create figures that dance or jump, fence or box. Put your imagination in motion.

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Rubber Band Car

Students construct cars powered by rubber bands and measure their performance after 20 minutes of practice. Lively insights into the mechanics, measurement and math of motion. Great for a followup program on creative elaboration. New design now employs wheels of diameter 1/π.

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Hill Quest

Wheels, axles, chassis parts, connectors and rubber bands are the basic components of each kit that allows students to construct cars that sprint or creep to the top of a wooden ramp…jousting with another student’s car. Challenge: Beat your opponent to the top of the three foot ramp and hold your ground. The project tests all the dynamics of Force and Motion and tests planning and problem solving.

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Robot Drum

Construct a music machine. Hear the logic of Leonardo's mind at work as he invents the first modern robot, an automatic drummer whose rhythms can be reprogrammed flexibly and whose tempos adjust automatically. Invent your own cadences.

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Rocks of Connecticut

Each child will build a display box to sort and test 6 (plus a mystery rock) rocks and minerals brought to the Museum from across Connecticut. Each sample will have different properties.

Every student will learn to use and will take home a lighted field microscope (10x - 60x).

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Sustainable Energy

Windmills have captured renewable energy for up to 2000 years. In new forms, wind machines will harness even more power in the future. Construct a classic whirligig to control, measure and apply wind power. With adjustable rotors.

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Mechanical Arm

Based on a design by British scientist Neil Downie, this is an exemplary model. It demonstrates the complex force of flexing muscle. Construct an arm that contracts and extends. consider Leonardo daVinci's study of anatomy and the robot mechanics it inspired. Domo arigato, Robot Armo!

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Balancing Circus

The Circus explores the art and science of balance, forces, center or gravity and performance. Conceived with a nod to artist /engineer Sandy Calder, each circus tests classic experiments at work.

Expands STC curriculum.

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Simple Machines

Whitney demonstrated the power of machines to guide and ease work. The screws, threads, levers and pulleys of this machine organize effort into power you can feel. Students assemble interchangeable parts and invent a personality for their machine.

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Pinball Machine

A popular project that teaches game design (beginnings, middles and ends), logic (rewards for difficulty), marble movement (caroms, momentum) and creative design (good games must still attract players.) A rare exploration of the work of play.

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Electromagnet

Switch on understanding. Construct a battery pack. Test it. Connect a simple switch Test it. Install an incandescent light. Test it. Then experiment with other challenges.... Lessons in electricity and thinking.

Including a new green LED circuit.

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Sustainable House

Construct a birdhouse of sustainably harvested pine and re-used plywood. Learn the measurements of adapting house to species. Learn to site house for temperature and security. Learn annual recycling. Learn sensible building choices for birds (and people) Or a birdfeeder.

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Magnetic Pendulum

All creatures live in a web of resources that support or suppress their growth. Create a dynamic model of an insect’s or bird’s world. Suspend a magnetized creature on a pendulum. Add food and shelter (with magnets) that attract the creature and predators and hazards that repel it. The creature navigates a complex and fascinating path.

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Connecticut Clipper or New England Whaling

In the first half of the 19th century, Connecticut joined the race to California and China in sleek, bold Clipper Ships. Construct a model clipper with a hold to export and import cargo that built Connecticut's industry and commerce.

Using the Charles W. Morgan, (a 19th c. whaling ship now berthed at Mystic Seaport) as a model, understand the industry that brought whalebone to the Strouse Adler Company Corset Factory in New Haven to make undergarments for upstanding Connecticut ladies.

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Woodland Village

Each student constructs half inch scale figures and a lodge… representing Quinnipiac or other woodland traditions…trees, tools, and totems that can be combined in a diorama of native American life. Adapt contemporary materials with the resourcefulness once applied to barks, skins and shells.

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Balance / Folk Toys

Immigrants brought to America traditions of crafting simple playthings out of common materials. These toys develop dexterity and inventiveness. Two toys from the catalog of classics. Understand Force and Motion or connect to Colonial curriculum or the geography of play. Yesterday's toys for today's kids – and they still evoke wonder. Nothing and everything is new.

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Life Stages - Butterfly

Each living thing goes through stages of development. Construct a small theater with scenes that change to present the growth cycle of plants or animals. We offer materials to study typically pumpkins or butterflies. With a design flexible enough for teachers and students to go back to their classes and present another life cycle on the reverse side of each stage block.

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Fishing Boat

Water is the perfect laboratory for experiment. Construct a boat. How will water test its materials, balance, and buoyancy? Test your work in our Water Learning Lab (May – Sept). Choose our Fishing Boat or the Leonardo Paddlewheel Boat.

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