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Classroom Activities

These educational and engaging activities are designed to assist educators in preparing children for a Museum field trip or extending the learning into the classroom.

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Absorb & Repel
Investigate how different materials repel or absorb water.
Airplanes: Let's Fly
It’s time to tinker! Become an engineer by creating your own flying machine.
Assemblage Art
Combine various materials together to explore the concept of assemblage art.
Bats!
Did you know there are at least 12 species of baths found throughout Illinois?
Boating Brigade
Let’s go sailing! Build and test your own boat. Can you get yours to float?
Bubbleology
Have you ever looked closely at the different colors of a bubble?
Cool Tool Creations
Create a tool that helps perform a job more effectively.
Drying it Out
Investigate and compare the rate of drying in different conditions.
Earthworm Investigations
Investigate how worms burrow in the ground and make tunnels.
Fabric Counts
Create your own bar graph by sorting and graphing colored fabric squares.
Fly Swatter Painting
Discover unique patterning and express yourself through painting!
From Trash to Treasure
Create art from recycled materials while understanding the need to eliminate litter and be kind to
Funky Brushes Kitchen Painting
Ready to paint but don’t have any brushes? No worries, anything can be a brush, even forks and spatu
Homemade Paper
Explore how used paper can be recycled into new paper.
Just a Little Bit
Grab some of your everyday items and discover which weighs the most or the least! 
Kitchen Jamboree
Observe, explore and investigate vibrating instruments in everyday places.
Lego Ziplining
How can you get your Lego to travel from the top of a zipline to the bottom?
Let it Roll
Design a ball run by setting up cardboard tubes to make the balls roll at different speeds
Make a Healthy Menu
Explore a variety of healthy foods to make a menu.
Math About Me!
Use your own name and attributes to explore measurement.
Mathematizing Weather
Explore how we can use math to investigate the weather
Measure it in a hop, skip and a jump
Explore and experiment how we use our bodies everyday to get from one place to another.
Movement Sticks
Exercise and use creativity to move like words/pictures.
Natural Vibrations
Discover sounds around us and how they are created through vibration.
Newspaper Super Structures
Children will build structures using newspaper and other materials.
No Hands!
Investigate through role play animal behavior without the use of hands.
Olympic Track Treadmill
Increase your heart rate by running and understand how running fast vs. walking affects your pulse.
Paper Strip Sculptures
Don’t throw away all your extra scrap paper! Turn it into art!
Pésalo
Estudiantes exploraran medidas usando diferentes materiales  
pH Art
How do we know if something is acidic or basic?
Recycled Towers
Collect household items to create the tallest or the widest tower you can!
Scented Dough
Develop olfactory distinction.
Soap Cloud Painting
Let’s make paint like clouds!
Spotting Simple Machines
Discover that simple machines are used every day in the world around us.
Strike Up the Band
Combine materials to discover the different sounds you can make with your own constructed instrument
Strong, Sturdy, Structures
Use every day and recycled materials to create bridges and towers to support different weight sizes!
Sunny Day Painting
Explore properties of water and watch evaporation happen by “painting” with water in the sun.
The Wheel Deal
Explore how wheels help move objects and reduce friction.
Vroom Vroom Vehicle Prints
Record motion with toy cars as you express yourself through painting!
What Pet Should I Get?
Design and construct the best way to carry animals to and from a shelter.
Where Does the Wind Blow?
The children will investigate through comparing the force of wind in different locations.