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Get a room full of wheels, propellers, rubber bands, axles, dowels and numerous other supplies that can help us make things move and set loose the imagination of children and Wow!

Fall Term: On the Ground: Trains and Cars: We’ll make train stations, tracks and little trains with wheels that turn with little people to go on rides. We’ll organize the routes and pathways the trains will travel. We’ll make bridges that are arched and suspended that will carry our trains across the landscape of our room With axles and wheels, rubber bands and motors, we’ll make cars and invent things that will propel across the floor of our room, have races, have fun.

Winter Term: The energy all around us: We’ll see how energy is used in transportation, whether it be fuel, water power, electricity, wind, or solar power we’ll learn to make things work. We’ll visit a wind farm or a dam to see ways we use nature’s energy. This is a great class for engineers, inventors, city planners, transportation experts and kids!

Spring Term: In the Air: Planes and Heliocopters: Using propellers, rubber bands, paper, we’ll make an airfoil, find out what makes a plane go up and stay up,make heliocopters that float down to a target and explore how accurate they can be. We’ll time them, measure their distances and heights they can fly. We’ll learn the parts of an airplane and how birds help us learn how to fly.

The goal of the class is to help create “you are in charge” people who are having a good time discovering themselves through their creativity. In the process they will be learning about how things can be made to transport us from place to place, how to organize and plan, how to make things move and fly.

From: Alice Cotton Updated: Warning: mktime() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in /home/village/www/www/includes/php/functions.inc.php on line 522 Wed Dec 31, 1969 04:00pm
	Trains on the go! On The Go syllabus: Instructor: Alice Cotton 2010 Fall term: Trains 1. Intro to the idea and what we’ll be doing - take some notes, draw some pictures, brainstorm ideas of what we want to do. Lesson One: train cars - kinds and vocabulary coupler, gauge, car types, rolling stock, axle, box car, flat car, intermodal car, etc. we’ll worry about the engines later Begin building our first train cars. Students will pick out boxes and tins, will get wheels and axles and ways to decorate. 2. Tracks, review gauge, add in ballast, kinds of tracks, monorail and the new magnetic rails that don’t use wheels and are very fast in Asia. Figure out how to make tracks for our train with our gauge. Demo of one type for our train. Problem solve how to build and store them, solve problems, use cars to test them. Make sure cars are coupled. Bring any toy or model engines you have to class. They have to be able to run without tracks like the Thomas the Engine locomotives which run on batteries. 3. Introduce locomotive ideas. Draw and demo steam locomotive, diesel, electric, there may be a field trip in here to a train place, to ride and see a type of locomotive. More on that later. Look at what’s been brought in. Make decisions and try out what we want to do to engine our trains. 4. Train layouts. Look at possible model train layouts, what structures we’ll need, how the train/s should go. Make what we need for the lay out: trees, buildings, etc. How do we store our lay out and trains discussion? We have rooms that are used by others so as we build we’ll be figuring out how to store our trains/layouts and keep them safe. 5. Lesson in train signals: What they are used for? What do we need for our layout. Electricity lesson, what is a complete electric circuit. Will have electrical light bulbs, alligator clips, etc. for students to experiiment and set things up with. 6. Build 7. Train company name, train names. We’ll discuss the names of trains throughout the U.S. , look at how they are named and pick our own names for both individual trains and our train company. Make company buldings after we figure out what we need like a scheduling center. 8. Class meeting on how to schedule our trains. 9. Build 10. Demo what we’ve done to other classes and parents.

From: Alice Cotton Updated:
Warning: mktime() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in /home/village/www/www/includes/php/functions.inc.php on line 522
Wed Dec 31, 1969 04:00pm

Trains on the go!

On The Go syllabus:
Instructor: Alice Cotton
2010 Fall term:
Trains

1. Intro to the idea and what we’ll be doing - take some notes, draw some pictures, brainstorm ideas of what we want to do.
Lesson One: train cars - kinds and vocabulary
coupler, gauge, car types, rolling stock, axle, box car, flat car, intermodal car, etc.
we’ll worry about the engines later
Begin building our first train cars. Students will pick out boxes and tins, will get wheels and axles and ways to decorate.

2. Tracks, review gauge, add in ballast, kinds of tracks, monorail and the new magnetic rails that don’t use wheels and are very fast in Asia.
Figure out how to make tracks for our train with our gauge. Demo of one type for our train. Problem solve how to build and store them, solve problems, use cars to test them.
Make sure cars are coupled. Bring any toy or model engines you have to class. They have to be able to run without tracks like the Thomas the Engine locomotives which run on batteries.

3. Introduce locomotive ideas. Draw and demo steam locomotive, diesel, electric, there may be a field trip in here to a train place, to ride and see a type of locomotive. More on that later.
Look at what’s been brought in. Make decisions and try out what we want to do to engine our trains.

4. Train layouts. Look at possible model train layouts, what structures we’ll need, how the train/s should go. Make what we need for the lay out: trees, buildings, etc. How do we store our lay out and trains discussion? We have rooms that are used by others so as we build we’ll be figuring out how to store our trains/layouts and keep them safe.

5. Lesson in train signals: What they are used for? What do we need for our layout. Electricity lesson, what is a complete electric circuit. Will have electrical light bulbs, alligator clips, etc. for students to experiiment and set things up with.

6. Build

7. Train company name, train names. We’ll discuss the names of trains throughout the U.S. , look at how they are named and pick our own names for both individual trains and our train company. Make company buldings after we figure out what we need like a scheduling center.

8. Class meeting on how to schedule our trains.

9. Build

10. Demo what we’ve done to other classes and parents.

On the Go Blog

Trains on the go!

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