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Kinetic Sculpture: Program the Pico Cricket to Make Your Art Light Up or Spin
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Use a Pico Cricket (micro-controller) to animate your art! You can program a Pico Cricket to make your art spin, light up, or make music.

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.

Cup Draw (Low Tech)
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In this activity, learners construct drawing machines using a cup, some markers, and a battery pack. The markers act as "legs" for the machine, making a drawing that records as it moves.

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.

Cactus Needle Phonograph
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Build a phonograph record player using a cactus needle, a record, LEGOs gear box, and a piece of paper! This activity uses a Pico Cricket to turn the motor.

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

Night Lights
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In this activity, learners create night lights using a plastic cup, programmable PICO Cricket, tri-color LED, and sensor.

Pop Bottle Whirligig
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Learn about friction and kinetic energy with this cool spinning toy.

Interactive Pencil Drawings: Drawings That Tell a Story!
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Margaret Pezalla-Granlund, a Minnesota artist, came up with this really fun and surprising activity using graphite from a pencil, connected with a Pico Cricket to tell a story: "The first time I saw s

Social Fireflies: Pico "Firefly" Communication
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Make two firefly lanterns, then program them to blink to one another and change colors.

Bearings for Your Whirligig
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Experiment with friction and make bearings for a whirligig! This activity is a nice introduction to friction and bearings and demonstrates why bearings are useful for spinning.

Pico Cricket Compass
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Learners can program a compass to draw a circle by itself using a Pico Cricket, some Legos, and lots of tape! Pico Cricket is required.

Make Pan Pipes
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This is a simple activity for learners to create a traditional musical instrument. Pan Pipes have developed all over the world in different cultures, from South America to Greece and China.

How to Make an Audio Tape Bow
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From this How To slide show, you create an Audio Tape Bow that can play distorted audio sounds by running it across a tape head.

Circuit Bending with Play-Doh
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Break open that used musical toy and squish some Play-Doh over the circuit boards, and you will hear some weird and distorted sounds the manufacturer never intended!

Overnight Painting Machine: Pico Cricket Activity
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This activity requires a Pico Cricket (tiny computer).
Magnus Glider
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A design challenge that takes paper airplanes into an entirely different direction: a magnus glider uses cups and and rubber bands to create a glider that uses the same forces that a curveball (from b

Make a Shaker
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This hands-on activity shows you how to make a shaker -- a small instrument with a big sound! Fill it with beads or even pennies for a cool sound.

Indicator Paper
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Use grape juice, baking soda, water and vinegar to make acid and base indicator paper! This activity contains a recipe and instructions for the indicator paper.