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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.

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.

Thaumatrope Illusion
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Design and create an optical illusion toy that makes two pictures appear to become one. This is called a thaumatrope and will allow the learner to investigate the phenomenon of persistence of vision.

Thaumatrope
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In this activity, learners make an optical illusion toy from the 1800s to explore persistence of vision.

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

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.

Soap Bubble Shapes
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Learners explore three-dimensional geometric frames including cubes and tetrahedrons, as they create bubble wands with pipe cleaners and drinking straws.

Kaleid-o-mania
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In this hands-on activity, learners build their own kaleidoscopes and explore how light can reflect of off surfaces such as mirrors, to produce beautiful patterns.

Thumb Piano
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In this activity, learners explore sound by constructing a simple piano out of wood and craft sticks.

Jumpy Dolls
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In this activity, learners are challenged to design and construct a jointed figure that moves in a motion (something like jumping jacks) when a string is pulled.

Toy Chemistry
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In this playful, goopy activity, learners mix two liquids to create a solid (that sometimes acts like a liquid ), using basic household materials such as borax and glue.

Lever Cowboy
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In this activity, learners build a figure that moves and "comes to life" when they pull its string.

Screaming String Thing
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In this simple and fun activity, learners discover the relationship between vibration and sound by making a squeaky toy instrument out of simple household materials.

Torsion Drum
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In this activity, learners build a musical drum using a cardboard tube, plastic wrap, and beads.

What is a Fossil?
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In this activity about dinosaurs, learners explore how and why fossils form. First, learners are introduced to dinosaur fossils by reading the book "Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones" by Byron Barton.

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!

Tactile Mazes
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In this activity (15th activity on the page) about the sense of touch, learners use glue and cardboard to construct a maze they use with their eyes closed.

Bubble Sculpting
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In this activity, learners develop spatial reasoning skills as they blow bubbles and observe what happens when the bubbles connect.