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Floating Head Cup
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In this activity, learners watch a figure "magically" float up through the air.

Let's Make Music
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In this activity, learners will create their own percussion instrument with recycled materials. Learners will explore design, fabrication, cause and effect and sound through this activity.

Cup Draw
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In this activity, learners construct drawing machines using a cup, some markers, and a cricket to control the movement. A programmed LEGO RCX or Cricket is required for this high-tech version.

Push Pull Painter
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In this activity, learners create painting machines that can paint moving forwards and backwards.

Crank It Up
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In this engineering activity, learners explore simple machines and then build cardboard automata using cams.

Motion Picture
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During this hands-on activity, learners are briefly exposed to moviemaking and animation, when they create their own thaumatropes.

Shadow Puppets
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In this activity, learners will create their own simple shadow puppets, and experiment with light and shadow while playing with them.

Boomerang
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Learners trace, cut out and fly a boomerang, outdoors or in a large indoor space.

Build a Bell Bracelet
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Learners make bell bracelets, place them on their wrists or ankles, and then dance to the rhythms and sounds the bells make. Many cultures use ankle or wrist bells to make music during dancing.

Design a Microexpression Zoetrope
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In this engineering design challenge, learners animate a facial expression and make a machine (zoetrope) that plays the animation back.

Buzzing Bee
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In this activity, learners explore sound by constructing an instrument toy that buzzes when you swing it.

Hang Time
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Learn how to make and fly a paper helicopter! This simple activity includes a template (for the copter "blades") and instructions for folding, flying, and testing designs.

Chirping Bird
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In this activity, learners build a cuica or chirping bird using straw, string, and a bottle cap. Use this activity to explore the interplay of motion and sound.

Make Maracas
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Make a rattle-like musical instrument! Shake it, hit it, spin it any way you want to!

Matraca
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In this activity, learners create a traditional Mexican noisemaker (a matraca) using cardboard, craft sticks, and a wooden dowel.

Pinball Wizard
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In this hands-on engineering project, kids use two simple machines, levers and inclined planes, to construct their own pinball machines.

Set It Straight
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In this activity, learners build a simple tabletop seesaw to test how different variables (the position of the fulcrum, distance, weight) affect its balance under increasing weight loads.

Micro Automata
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In this activity, learners build small animated toys that move.

Action Figure
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In this project, students explore how levers work, by making a puppet with moving limbs.

Phenakistascope
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In this optics activity, learners build an animation tool to make mini movies. When you spin a phenakistascope, the pictures move so quickly that your eyes and brain can't separate the images.