#InTheLoop | The New York Hall of Science has online activities for children of all ages
BY QEDC It's In Queens
The doors are closed, but the New York Hall of Science is open online and constantly producing tutorials to supplement science-and-math education for youngsters.
Available via NYSCI’s At-Home resources page, the resources include an interactive graphic novel, online tutorials for DIY activities, and digital apps that explore geometry, fractions, patterns, and sustainability. The activities are free, and all exemplify the Queens museum’s “Design, Make, Play” approach to learning.
Here are some of the options.
Transmissions: Gone Viral Inspired by the 1999 West Nile Virus epidemic and designed for middle schoolers, this interactive, web-based, graphic novel follows a group of youngsters who investigate a virus plaguing animals and humans in their neighborhood. Readers follow along as the characters work with a veterinary pathologist and an entomologist to sort evidence and find patterns to solve the mystery.
Online Tutorials More than 10 tutorials promote activities such as tape-casting, acrylic paint-marbling, book-binding, glue masks, and DIY lightsabers.
Makerzines These three booklets provide step-by-step instructions for activities to do with adult supervision. Projects include a sound machine, wooden acrobat toy, light-painting, and acoustic speaker.
The Pack Easily downloaded to iPhones and iPads via the App Store or to Windows and Mac OSX computers, this adventure teaches how to build and use algorithms. The story is set in the fictional world of Algos, where healthy ecosystems have faltered, and food and water are scarce. Players must bring the ecosystem into balance by replenishing water sources and finding seeds. They need the help of a “Pack” of creatures to dig up water and seeds and knock food from trees. Mastering how to use algorithms is the key to finding the seeds and restoring harmony to Algos.
Picture Dots This early childhood app encourages interactions between learners and adults to develop literacy, math, and science skills. Working with adults, children (ages 3 to 8) take photos, drag colored dots onto the photos, and then assign each dot a word, phrase, musical note, and sound or record short sentences. (Press play to hear the stories.) The dots can also be used for color matching, counting objects, categorizing items, and making patterns.
Math Apps Easily downloaded on the App Store, these two iPad apps explore middle and high school math. Choreo Graph uses concepts from coordinate geometry, angles, and rotations to make animations from simple dance moves to complex scenes. Fraction Mash encourages elementary and middle school students to use concepts involving fractions to make hilarious and complex photo mashups.
YouTube Videos The Explainer TV Channel features interviews with scientists, experiments, and DIY projects. Learn How to Make Ice Cream in a Ziplock Bag. Make DIY Speaker Cups. Make Soda Tab Bracelets. Watch an Awesome Fire Experiment.
Google Science Journal Curriculum Primarily geared towards sixth- to eighth-graders, these four engineering activities utilize simple materials and the free Google Science Journal app. Activities include Make a Better Speaker, Shake, Rattle and Roll – An Earthquake Simulation, 0-60 mph: An Exploration of Acceleration, and Where the Sunlight Goes: An Exploration of Tree Leaves.
learnXdesign Activities include building with duct tape and creating inflatable sculptures. Many can be done with common household materials.
False Conviction: Innocence, Guilt & Science This free, interactive ebook — accessed on an iOS device using the Apple Books app — explores how innocent people can be convicted of crimes they did not commit. Geared towards high school students and adults, it investigates real cases in which eyewitness accounts, confessions, and crime lab tests led to false convictions, and where DNA evidence helped exonerate the innocent. Interactive experiences let readers examine DNA in blood, hair, and semen, attempt to match a bullet to the gun that fired it, spot liars based on body language, and more.
Charlie & Kiwi’s Evolutionary Adventure Based on the eponymous museum exhibit and recommended for children up to third grade, this 13-minute, animated video follows Charlie, a student writing a report about his favorite bird, the kiwi. As he dozes off, Charlie dreams that he travels back in time to meet his great-great-great-great grandfather, Charles Darwin. Together, they travel even further back in time to help Charlie understand how birds evolved from dinosaurs and how kiwis might have become nocturnal birds with whiskers and no wings.
Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think Geared for second- to fifth-graders and accessible on an iOS device via the Apple Books app, this ebook is adapted from the NYSCI exhibition with the same name. Through interactives, videos, and case studies, readers learn about surprising and impressive thinking skills in a variety of animals.
Images: New York Hall of Science