With the welcome return of the Ready, Set, Roll exhibit, we thought that we should investigate how you could create your own working track from materials that can be found in your own home.

What you will need:

-Tubing for example: Toilet paper roll, wrapping paper tubes, insulation tubes

-A variety of balls (sizes and weights)

-Tape

Extras:

-Cups

-Books (used to raise height)

We had fun experimenting with different tubes to see how crazy our roller coaster could get! Check it out:

First we built a simple ramp (like a ski jump). The aim of this track is to allow the ball to pick up as much speed (acceleration) while it is traveling down the ramp and finally to land in one of the cups at the bottom.

From this we then tried the same ramp with different balls of different sizes and weights. Would the different sizes/ weights of the balls make a difference?

The image below shows a more advanced track, this time including a loop in the middle. In order to make it around the loop, your ball needs to gain enough velocity. What can you do to make sure your ball builds enough speed to conquer the Loop d’Loop?

To add an obstacle to your track, try adding a jump to see if your ball can make it across the gap.

For our jump, we used paper cups to hold up the track. Do you think you could make a wider gap for your roller coaster?

Finally, you can add a spiral cone to catch the ball in at the end of your track! It is very easy to make–Just draw a circle on a piece of paper, then either cut out a circle or have an adult do it for you. Next, you tape both of the sides together and add your finishing touch to the track!

You can make your roller coaster as long, loopy, or extreme as you want! See how adventurous you can get.

Once you’ve created your own coaster, you can try out ours at the Museum!

You can make your own musical instrument, just follow the instructions below for our banjo box!

Instead of strings we used rubber bands. You’ll notice the thinner rubber bands make a higher note. Why is this? It’s because the thinner the band the faster it vibrates, making a higher pitch. The thicker band vibrates slower, producing a lower note. Our banjo box is a million times easier to make than an actual banjo, and just as much fun!

All you need is:

• An old box (we used a left-over soap box because it was small)
• Rubber bands of different thickness
• 2 Pencils, pens or markers (to raise the rubber bands from the box)

Just wrap the rubber bands around the box and slide the pencils under the bands to raise them, then you’re done! Wasn’t that easy? See how ours turned out:

We had a lot of fun playing our creative instrument. You can make instruments out of all sorts of found objects. This guy made a banjo with an old cigar box!

We admit he’s a little better at playing it than we are with our banjo box…

At the first table, kids got to choose from pre-made stencils of stars, hearts, and houses (even a rocket ship!) for their design. Using markers, the “picture” was redrawn on the wood plaque, but only looked like random dots.

Parents and kids choosing a template and wood piece to start!

Those random dots came in handy while using the power drills at the next station. Hand drills and power drills (with adult supervision) were used to make holes through wood plaques. Proper safety was explained, such as using goggles and clamping the wood plaques to the table.

Gallery Manager, Matt Brown showing a woodcrafter how to clamp to the table.

Under the hands-on guidance of Gallery Educators, kids got to use power drills and learn how to correctly hold the drill and change the direction of the drill bit to make all the holes for the final step.

Matt Brown helping kids use the ‘big’ power drill.

Gallery Educator, Jennifer Himstedt, helping kids use the electric power drill.

At the last station, a little sanding was used to smooth out the wood plaque. The original pictures were redrawn with different colors of yarn sewn through the holes. Examples were used, but kids had amazing ideas to add colors and make each wood piece an original creation!

Kids sewing the final touches to their creations!

Woodcrafting 101 will be an ongoing program to give kids a hands-on experience working with wood tools and crafts. Gallery Manager and Woodcrafting 101 creator, Matt Brown has been setting up the program and has new ideas for ACM’s new program!  New ideas are in the works and all ages are invited to join with adult supervision! The next Woodcrafting 101 will be on December 3, 2011 at ACM.

If you have adult supervision, a power drill (or hand drill), needle and thread at home: continue reading this post for step-by-step instructions on how to make a wood plaque of your own.

Supplies:

• Wood piece/plaque (Woodcrafting 101 pieces ranged from 5×5 squares to slightly larger rectangles)
• Cardboard
• Hole puncher
• Marker
• Goggles
• Power drill or hand drill
• Clamp
• Table space (recommend a worktable)
• Scrap wood (slightly larger than wood piece being worked on)
• Sand paper
• Needle
• Yarn
• Tape (optional)

1- Make sure you have adult supervision.

2- Make the design you want on the cardboard.

3- Decide, mark, and punch out the holes as your template. Remember to have enough holes to keep the outline of your design, but not too many.

3- Put your cardboard template on your wood piece the way you would like your design to go. Mark with your marker each hole you decided on.

4- Clamp the scrap wood to the table, then clamp the wood piece to the scrap piece. This makes sure the bottom table is protected from being drilled into and holds the wood piece still.

6- Put on your goggles!

7- With adult supervision, hold the drill straight up and down with the drill bit on the hole. (Adults: make sure the directions are correct. Clockwise-drilling down into the wood piece. Counterclockwise-drilling ‘up’ or reverse Turn on the drill and put some pressure and drill through the wood piece to the other side. Repeat with each marked dot.

8- Sand the sides of the wood piece to get a smooth texture. This helps prevent any possible splinters!

9- Thread your needle. Knot or tape the thread on the backside of you design.

10- Continue to thread your design, changing colors as you want, bringing the thread to the backside and knot or tape the end again.

Place your sewn wood piece where you can show off your crafty creation!

Have you ever been bored on a road trip? Then you’ve probably played the I-Spy game. I-Spy is a guessing game, sometimes played in cars, where the fun is in the observation. There are many variations of the game, and right now at ACM, our newest favorite is the I-Spy Bottle. This fun craft is extremely easy to make and the possibilities of I-Spy combinations are endless!

Here’s the first one we made using random objects, an old water bottle, and plain white rice:

Some tips for making the bottle:

• Gather items that you know will fit through the opening of the bottle
• Use a funnel or make a paper one, so the filler (the rice) doesn’t spill
• Try to add the filler and the objects in increments so the objects don’t all lump together
• You can hot glue gun the top of the bottle if you want to avoid the contents spilling out in the excitement of I-Spying

You can make all sorts of themes with your I-Spy Bottles, use shells for an ocean theme, or creepy objects for a Halloween one. You can even vary the types of fillers you use: rice, pasta, beans, birdseed, lentils, beads, sand… it all works.

If you want to add another fun step in your I-Spy Bottle creation, try dyeing the filler you use, Momtastic has a great tutorial for coloring rice (it works on beans, pasta, and lentils too!) maybe you could make a rainbow themed bottle?

We even made a Dino-Spy Bottle in honor of our exhibit Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice! Check it out:

We used assorted beans to represent soil. It looks like the tiny triceratops is being excavated from the rocky remains!

Tell us how your bottles turned out, what theme did you choose?

The Gravity Well here at The Austin Children’s Museum teaches us about energy. When the coin drops lower into the well some of its gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. As the coin drops down it has higher velocity. Also, the coin goes around in smaller circles the lower it gets. So you can see how the coin completes orbits much faster near the center of the well, just like a planet would orbiting around the sun!

Make your own gravity well:

What you need:

• large piece of paper
• pencil
• ruler
• scissors
• various balls
• tape
• paper tube

Experiment with balls or marbles of all shapes and sizes and send us your results. Do the heavier ones travel faster? What about the smaller ones?

Send us your pics of your homemade gravity wells!