Yes

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. Create an array and learn to identify the three different kinds of rocks your samples fit into.

Every student will learn to use and will take home a 10x/30x hand lens magnifier and light.

Study motion by building a spiral track for a marble to follow. Understand gravity, friction, inertia.

Do you build from the bottom up or the top down?

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

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.

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.

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. With whales to float with your ship.

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.

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.

It doesn't take a meteorologist 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 person with a wind vane at its back. When the wind turns it 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?

Dexterity games are found in every culture and tradition.
It's a way of teaching your brain and hands to work as a team.

These games still appeal. Maybe even understand the math behind the game. But more than that, just play them and enjoy. Sometimes learning is just that much fun. Just build and play.

Choose among four different kinds of games – to play by yourself or with/against a partner/competitor.

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.