Best outing ever.
Dec. 5th, 2005 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerThe Minnesota Science Museum has a special rate on Mondays for young children. As a bonus, adults with Children's Museum memberships also get a discounted rate. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
springbok1 had a half day off today and offered to take the girls to the Science Museum. I decided to go along, because I really wanted to see the Invention At Play exhibit.
That exhibit is great. Whether you're a child or an adult. They have these magnetized slides that you can use to make a marble run using spatulas and kitchen spoons with magnets on the back. A setup to let you pretend to windsurf. Really cool little mechanical toys that run when you press a button. And this exhibit where you can build a "Jitterbug." Normally it costs an extra $3 to take your Jitterbug home (you can build one free, and then leave it there, if you want) -- if you go on a Monday with a kid, the kid gets a coupon good for one free Jitterbug kit.
The Jitterbug kit is a 1.5v motor, an AA battery with a rubber band around it, half a hot-glue glue stick (attached to the motor as a little propeller), and a small square of styrofoam. They offer plastic cups as a "body," and also provide pipecleaners, pom-poms, googly eyes, feathers, popsicle sticks, and tape. You make yourself a critter, with the motor attached somewhere, and the battery close enough that you can connect it to the motor. Turn it on by connecting the wires, and your critter will jitter itself around, or spin, or do other interesting things.
Kiera couldn't really do this on her own (I made one for her) (okay, I'll be honest: I made one because I thought this was quite possibly the coolest craft activity I'd ever gotten to play around with, and I let Kiera make suggestions) but Molly made hers mostly on her own.
If you live far enough away that you're not likely to make it to the Science Museum, but think this sounds like fun -- it would be really, really easy and cheap to put together a Jitterbug kit on your own. The Science Museum buys their motors from Ax-Man Surplus, but Radio Shack also sells them for about $3.50. The "propeller" is the kind of glue stick you'd use in a hot glue gun, I think, cut in half. They stick the AA battery in one of those wide rubber bands that grocery stores use to hold your broccoli together, and a square of styrofoam is easy to find. Everything else was the kind of craft supplies you can find anywhere, or you can use whatever you've got handy. I'd strongly suggest googly eyes (it's fun to watch them jiggle around), I think both a rigid "limb" (e.g., popsicle sticks, plasticware, twigs off the Christmas tree) and a flexible "limb" (e.g., pipe cleaners) are useful supplies, and if putting together a gift as a Christmas present, you might consider including jingle bells, unless you think a small child might start experimenting with conductivity.
If you live close enough to the Science Museum that you could go yourself and do the activity -- do it! If you bring a kid, splurge on your own kit and make one of your own. This was SO MUCH FUN.
We wandered down to the table where they let you do experiments, at one point, and Molly started trying to solve one of the the Pentominoes puzzles they had out for people to try. She wasn't able to solve it, but she kept trying for a half hour, and I had to drag her away to have a snack and visit another exhibit. Afterwards, I asked her if she wanted to try it again, and she said she did, so we went back down. The docent tried to take it away from her when she reached for it, saying that it was too hard for her. I told him that she wanted to try it anyway, so he handed it back, and she spent another half hour trying to solve it. Again, I had to drag her away.
It was a flash of one of those traits that sometimes just floors me about Molly. She can be one of the most calmly persistent kids I have ever met. The first docent said that lots of young kids will pick up the Pentominoes and try them out, but he had never seen any kid her age stick with it for so long. I was never like this as a kid -- in fact, I still have issues with this as an adult. I find it fascinating and strangely gratifying that Molly can work on something hard so stubbornly. If she decides she wants to take Calculus, I bet she'll get a better grade in it than I did.
They also had a set of something similar to Tangrams. Molly tried those out, too, and solved those puzzles much more easily.
springbok1 had a half day off today and offered to take the girls to the Science Museum. I decided to go along, because I really wanted to see the Invention At Play exhibit.That exhibit is great. Whether you're a child or an adult. They have these magnetized slides that you can use to make a marble run using spatulas and kitchen spoons with magnets on the back. A setup to let you pretend to windsurf. Really cool little mechanical toys that run when you press a button. And this exhibit where you can build a "Jitterbug." Normally it costs an extra $3 to take your Jitterbug home (you can build one free, and then leave it there, if you want) -- if you go on a Monday with a kid, the kid gets a coupon good for one free Jitterbug kit.
The Jitterbug kit is a 1.5v motor, an AA battery with a rubber band around it, half a hot-glue glue stick (attached to the motor as a little propeller), and a small square of styrofoam. They offer plastic cups as a "body," and also provide pipecleaners, pom-poms, googly eyes, feathers, popsicle sticks, and tape. You make yourself a critter, with the motor attached somewhere, and the battery close enough that you can connect it to the motor. Turn it on by connecting the wires, and your critter will jitter itself around, or spin, or do other interesting things.
Kiera couldn't really do this on her own (I made one for her) (okay, I'll be honest: I made one because I thought this was quite possibly the coolest craft activity I'd ever gotten to play around with, and I let Kiera make suggestions) but Molly made hers mostly on her own.
If you live far enough away that you're not likely to make it to the Science Museum, but think this sounds like fun -- it would be really, really easy and cheap to put together a Jitterbug kit on your own. The Science Museum buys their motors from Ax-Man Surplus, but Radio Shack also sells them for about $3.50. The "propeller" is the kind of glue stick you'd use in a hot glue gun, I think, cut in half. They stick the AA battery in one of those wide rubber bands that grocery stores use to hold your broccoli together, and a square of styrofoam is easy to find. Everything else was the kind of craft supplies you can find anywhere, or you can use whatever you've got handy. I'd strongly suggest googly eyes (it's fun to watch them jiggle around), I think both a rigid "limb" (e.g., popsicle sticks, plasticware, twigs off the Christmas tree) and a flexible "limb" (e.g., pipe cleaners) are useful supplies, and if putting together a gift as a Christmas present, you might consider including jingle bells, unless you think a small child might start experimenting with conductivity.
If you live close enough to the Science Museum that you could go yourself and do the activity -- do it! If you bring a kid, splurge on your own kit and make one of your own. This was SO MUCH FUN.
We wandered down to the table where they let you do experiments, at one point, and Molly started trying to solve one of the the Pentominoes puzzles they had out for people to try. She wasn't able to solve it, but she kept trying for a half hour, and I had to drag her away to have a snack and visit another exhibit. Afterwards, I asked her if she wanted to try it again, and she said she did, so we went back down. The docent tried to take it away from her when she reached for it, saying that it was too hard for her. I told him that she wanted to try it anyway, so he handed it back, and she spent another half hour trying to solve it. Again, I had to drag her away.
It was a flash of one of those traits that sometimes just floors me about Molly. She can be one of the most calmly persistent kids I have ever met. The first docent said that lots of young kids will pick up the Pentominoes and try them out, but he had never seen any kid her age stick with it for so long. I was never like this as a kid -- in fact, I still have issues with this as an adult. I find it fascinating and strangely gratifying that Molly can work on something hard so stubbornly. If she decides she wants to take Calculus, I bet she'll get a better grade in it than I did.
They also had a set of something similar to Tangrams. Molly tried those out, too, and solved those puzzles much more easily.
