The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop | Make something of yourself.

Fuller's Island: the year in boats

Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) was a brilliant designer, philosopher and futurist. Because he had dropped out of Harvard, he was often asked: where did you get your education? His answer: on an island in Maine, as a child, building toy boats.

Build small boats. Let them (and water) educate and entertain you. Build boats to learn history: the ironclad Monitor that battled 150 years ago, the Titanic that sank 100 years ago. Learn science: balance, buoyancy and surface tension. Learn invention: create your own small fleet. Learn ideas: the power of the tiny trimtab to turn large, large boats. Learn to learn from water.
Batteries included

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Micro Maker Faire

What's a Maker? Makers choose to construct, shape, invent, hack (rebuild), or recycle things others might just buy. Makers love tools and technology. There is Make Magazine. There are Maker plans, Maker tools, and Maker way of thinking. We have collected challenges to introduce the Make culture. Mornings, work on cars, catapults, wearable LEDs and a vacuum-molded mask. Each afternoon, choose a workshop that interests you: a carrot lathe, giant spin art, more electronics, water rockets, bamboo constructions, chain-reaction machines, Steam Punk style, the world of Howtoons, and great take aparts* Batteries included

*Special thanks: Physics Laboratories, Yale University.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Micro Maker Faire

What's a Maker? Makers choose to construct, shape, invent, hack (rebuild), or recycle things others might just buy. Makers love tools and technology. There is Make Magazine. There are Maker plans, Maker tools, and Maker way of thinking. We have collected challenges to introduce the Make culture. Mornings, work on cars, catapults, wearable LEDs and a vacuum-molded mask. Each afternoon, choose a workshop that interests you: a carrot lathe, giant spin art, more electronics, water rockets, bamboo constructions, chain-reaction machines, Steam Punk style, the world of Howtoons, and great take aparts* Batteries included

*Special thanks: Physics Laboratories, Yale University.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

The Art and Play of Pokémon

Pokémon™ are many and complicated characters. Our experts have put together a course of study that will make sense to those who know little and challenge those who know much of the Pokémon lore. Build characters to see how they were first imagined. Follow stories as characters grow and change. Create traditional characters and your own characters to understand the rules that make their world make sense. Shape, assemble, paint, play.

By Julia Morrow, Dana Clough
Curators: Dan Morowitz, Monika Danielewicz

Pokémon™ characters and stories are copyrighted intellectual property. This workshop is a study of the characters.

Designed for ages 5, 6, 7 and 8

Pokemen

People of the Ice and Snow

Spend a week with our neighbors to the far, far north, the Inuit. Their ancestors and customs are ancient. They have learned to live in a world that is cold most months of the year. Build an Inuit house that uses the earth and sod to help keep it warm. Construct and clothe an extended family. Build a team of trusted dogs to haul your sled. construct an umiak, a light, agile boat they invented for hunting and transport. Like the Inuit, make art and tools with driftwood, stones and bones – the simple materials that their world provides. Learn new words and game from a distant culture.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

INuit

Sew a Story

Learning to use a sewing machine is a lifelong skill that one never regrets having. In this class, architect, master seamstress/designer Martha Burns (www.smbstitches.com) will teach younger children to sew on our Janome sewing machines by teaching them to tell a story through panels or books that they sew. They will lean the basics of the sewing machine, important hand sewing techniques and maybe even some embroidery all while telling a story each of them concocted the first day of class.

Designed for ages 8, 9 and 10

The Theatre of Illusions

Pictures don't lie (usually). But perhaps your brain does. It can see things that are not there. Or not see things that are. Artists know this. Scientists know this. Construct a whole theatre of optical illusions to understand how colors, proportions, and shapes can fool us. Construct a praxinoscope whose mirrors will make your drawings move. Construct a curious room whose angles will make your wooden figures change size as you watch. Recreate the artist Marcel Dubhamp's experiments with spinning images. Learn classic tricks and create your own. Then, learn that these are not tricks, but windows through which we can watch the brain at work.

Special thanks: Dr. Marvin Chun, Visual Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Yale University.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

Theatre-of-Illusion

Electric Circus Circuits

The circus is about energy: clever ways to spin, balance, flip, swing and leap. Build a small circus that two batteries will bring to life. Power motors, magnets, propellers and lights with circus circuits that are designed for young experimenters. Costume and color your performers with paint, tissue, glitter and sequins. Construct, connect and coach your characters. Because, in engineering, as in the circus, practice is essential.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

Electric Circus

The Greek Merchant Empire

Greece is a mountainous land with coast on three sides and many near islands. Her soil produced grapes and olives, but not much wheat. Trade was essential. Her early city states connected and competed by sea. Greek merchants carried wine, olive oil and beautiful pottery to exchange for wheat, spices, papyrus and shipbuilding materials. As the Greeks traveled they built trade Colonies and temples and their myths absorbed new ideas and chapters. It’s no accident that Greek epic tales are about the sea adventures of the seafaring heroes Jason and Odysseus.

Construct a Greek Merchant ship and her crew. Make pottery and metal work to exchange. Strike the first coins from Lydia. Construct a small Greek Temple to honor a god or goddess in a far off land. Learn the basics of trade from the land that gave us the word for economics which explains the necessity of trade.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Electric Dragons

Look at Dragons. They are made up of parts of reptiles, birds, mammals and imagination. Construct your own dragon whose tail sways, wings flap, eyes glow, voice roars and more; all by the no-longer magical power of two batteries. Part Science: learn the mechanics of motors and LEDs, in safe, simple circuits. Part Art: shape, color and texture wings, claws, tails and fangs. Hear the best of the classic dragon tales.

The fifth in our First Circuitsseries

Designed for ages 5, 6, 7 and 8

Chagall the Potter

100 years ago, just 25 years old, the artist Marc Chagall moved from his native Russia to Paris, the capital of modern art. Chagall brought a gift for powerful color and for telling stories. Chagall poured his art onto paper and canvas and into bronze and glass. With his friend, Picasso, he experimented with ceramics. Create tiles and figures in clay guided by Marc Chagalls vision and stories. Discover the science and art of his vibrant colors. Then develop your own style and color palette.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

Chagall

Bravery

All important stories teach us how to be wise, and fair, and even brave. Build a Highland castle, a boat and a trusty steed. Construct lords and ladies to disagree a lot. Construct a mysterious monster someone must face. Then make a hero or heroine to take on the challenge. Heroes are not born, they are made. That's the story – the tests, and luck, and wise help, and choices that make a hero brave. Build and paint a castle, shape and clothe characters, make and fur a monster, tell legends, and play.

Designed for ages 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9

Brave

Micropottery: The Wheel

The potter's wheel is one of civilizations's first machines. It lets fingers sculpt and finish clay vessels precisely and efficiently. It produced containers to collect, store and prepare food and water. Use your own micro potter's wheel powered by batteries. Small pots speed drying time and allow a whole course of ceramics in a week. Make tools and a carrier. Fire and decorate your work.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

Olivia-&-Etana-with-wheel

The Gifts of the Nile

Civilization begins with order. The Nile River organized Egypt. Annual floods fertilized the land and promised plentiful and regular harvests. The Nile’s waters flowed north; her winds pushed south to connect her peoples by boat. Eastern and Western deserts fought back invaders. These gifts nurtured powerful kings and queens, writing, mathematics, science, the arts and remarkable building.

Construct an Egyptian family and villa, its servants, its livestock. Choose a trade to master and represent. Construct a Nile barge, or fishing boat, or a pleasure boat. Join the class in flooding a section of the Nile and beginning a Pyramid. All guided by David Macaulay Pyramid ©1975,and the Meketre Tomb Models, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10 and 11

Programming: Scratch

This class is for ages 8 – 11
Designed at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a free programming language that allows you to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share your creations on the web. An extremely flexible, powerful tool.

Instructor Michael Brownstein will bring his special expertise to teach beginners and non-beginners alike.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10 and 11

scratch

Re(ad)Joyce

The illustrator William Joyce (b.1957) has produced children's books, movies, and iPhone Apps that are changing the way we see the world. All the while he has stayed very close to how he saw the world when he was 5. In The World of William Joyce Scrapbook(© 1997), he tells (and shows) his story. Make your own Scrapbook. Explore his stories, and his love of monsters, dinosaurs, bugs and spaceships. Draw, paint in watercolor and construct characters like Joyce's and of your own invention. Make little people and mix them in with real toys. Build an All Important Rocket Pack to remind yourself that with imagination, you can travel anywhere. Learn from a master's story how to begin your story as an artist.

Designed for ages 5, 6, 7 and 8

Read-Joyce-figs

Sculpture Garden

For 1000 years, the Japanese have constructed gardens that are works of art. Yes, there are plants. But every stone, every bench, every figure, every shadow is arranged to sculpt a place of peace and beauty.

Create a tiny garden to collect your creations. Experiment with clay, wood, wire, paper and fibers. Then, use these materials to make your own sculptures to create a colorful, vibrant garden of your own.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

Japanese-Sculpture-Garden

Olympics 2012: On Wheels

This will be the 2nd week of the 2012 Olympics in London. Three of our workshops will rival London's events in spectacle and scale. We will produce 1000 competitors, judges and spectators. We will create venues and pageantry. We will follow the news from London as we create our own.

Our youngest creator/competitors will each create a long distance runner, (on wheels), a soccer for field hockey player, (on wheels), a high jumper or pole vaulter, (on wheels). Construct a horse (on wheels) and rider. Choose your competition: dressage, eventing or jumping. Choose to make a table tennis competitor or martial artist.

Designed for ages 5, 6, 7 and 8

Olympics-on-wheels

Olympics 2012: On Water

This will be the 2nd week of the 2012 Olympics in London. Three of our workshops will rival London's events in spectacle and scale. We will produce 1000 competitors, judges and spectators. We will create venues and pageantry. We will follow the news from London as we create our own.

Our tweens will each create and train swimmers, a diver, a synchronized swimmer or water polo player. Build and sail a 4780 Class dinghy with its crew (men or women). Construct a men's or women's crew and a shell for them to row.

Designed for ages 7, 8 and 9

Olympics 2012: On Wire

The Olympics are a test of design. Athletes train to master speed, strength, control, balance and sometimes artistry. Test your design skills...and your motor skills.(Electric motor skills.) Construct an athlete for speed: a sprinter or a cyclist;
an athlete for strengths: a weightlifter or shot putter; a competitor for control: a fencer (Foil, Épée, or Sabre); an artist for style: a gymnast (high bar, or floor.)

Construct and modify a controller to power them all. Design your team’s uniforms, mascots, and banners. Contribute to a triumphant closing ceremony.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Olympics-on-Wires

The Battle of 5000 Chariots

In 1274 BCE, Rameses the Great of Egypt led an army north to attack the Hittite Mutawalli II. The Egyptians sought to win back Kadesh, a strategic city on the line (now in Syria) between the ancient Empires. There are both Hittite and Egyptian records of the battle, making it the first battle in history for which we have written (or inscribed) accounts. Of course, the accounts do not agree: each side proclaims victory. But it is known that 2000 Egyptian Chariots encountered as many as 3000 northern chariots. The largest contest of Chariots ever. It is known that there were spies, and traps and blunders and heroic recoveries.

Build an Egyptian and a Hittite Chariot, their horses, drivers and archers. Construct northern and southern infantry. Join the class in reconstructing the city of Kadesh, the feints and ploys and charges of the battle, and its outcomes as both sides recall it.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

5000-chariot1

The Battle of 5000 Chariots

In 1274 BCE, Rameses the Great of Egypt led an army north to attack the Hittite Mutawalli II. The Egyptians sought to win back Kadesh, a strategic city on the line (now in Syria) between the ancient Empires. There are both Hittite and Egyptian records of the battle, making it the first battle in history for which we have written (or inscribed) accounts. Of course, the accounts do not agree: each side proclaims victory. But it is known that 2000 Egyptian Chariots encountered as many as 3000 northern chariots. The largest contest of Chariots ever. It is known that there were spies, and traps and blunders and heroic recoveries.

Build an Egyptian and a Hittite Chariot, their horses, drivers and archers. Construct northern and southern infantry. Join the class in reconstructing the city of Kadesh, the feints and ploys and charges of the battle, and its outcomes as both sides recall it.

Designed for ages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

5000-chariot1

Leonardo Studio

Leonardo was a teacher. His many notebooks collect lessons, words and drawings…for himself and his apprentices. In this week-long studio, we will follow his instructions. Everyone – instructor and student – will collect drawings in a notebook. We will begin each day with an exercise Leonardo proposes to improve careful looking.

Then three separate groups will work on projects to introduce basic building skills. Next, each child will choose a workshop to concentrate on specific skills. Finally, each child will join a group that will collaborate on a project.

We will end the week sharing these projects.

Designed for ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Leonardo Studio

Leonardo was a teacher. His many notebooks collect lessons, words and drawings…for himself and his apprentices. In this week-long studio, we will follow his instructions. Everyone – instructor and student – will collect drawings in a notebook. We will begin each day with an exercise Leonardo proposes to improve careful looking.

Then three separate groups will work on projects to introduce basic building skills. Next, each child will choose a workshop to concentrate on specific skills. Finally, each child will join a group that will collaborate on a project.

We will end the week sharing these projects.

Designed for ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Leonardo Studio

Leonardo was a teacher. His many notebooks collect lessons, words and drawings…for himself and his apprentices. In this week-long studio, we will follow his instructions. Everyone – instructor and student – will collect drawings in a notebook. We will begin each day with an exercise Leonardo proposes to improve careful looking.

Then three separate groups will work on projects to introduce basic building skills. Next, each child will choose a workshop to concentrate on specific skills. Finally, each child will join a group that will collaborate on a project.

We will end the week sharing these projects.

Designed for ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Leonardo Studio

Leonardo was a teacher. His many notebooks collect lessons, words and drawings…for himself and his apprentices. In this week-long studio, we will follow his instructions. Everyone – instructor and student – will collect drawings in a notebook. We will begin each day with an exercise Leonardo proposes to improve careful looking.

Then three separate groups will work on projects to introduce basic building skills. Next, each child will choose a workshop to concentrate on specific skills. Finally, each child will join a group that will collaborate on a project.

We will end the week sharing these projects.

Designed for ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Leonardo Studio

Leonardo was a teacher. His many notebooks collect lessons, words and drawings…for himself and his apprentices. In this week-long studio, we will follow his instructions. Everyone – instructor and student – will collect drawings in a notebook. We will begin each day with an exercise Leonardo proposes to improve careful looking.

Then three separate groups will work on projects to introduce basic building skills. Next, each child will choose a workshop to concentrate on specific skills. Finally, each child will join a group that will collaborate on a project.

We will end the week sharing these projects.

Designed for ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Leonardo Studio

Leonardo was a teacher. His many notebooks collect lessons, words and drawings…for himself and his apprentices. In this week-long studio, we will follow his instructions. Everyone – instructor and student – will collect drawings in a notebook. We will begin each day with an exercise Leonardo proposes to improve careful looking.

Then three separate groups will work on projects to introduce basic building skills. Next, each child will choose a workshop to concentrate on specific skills. Finally, each child will join a group that will collaborate on a project.

We will end the week sharing these projects.

Designed for ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12