During Presidents’ Day weekend my team and I got to run some really special programming for Science, Sabers, and Star Wars.

One of the activities we did for our youngest padawans (or learners) was our build-a-droid activity. This activity was in IExplore and the kids got to color and design their own custom droids. We taped as many as we could to the gallery walls and tons of guests took their droids home!

Then we had our Jedi Academy activities which included our Jedi Trials, Build your own Lightsaber, our Dronesium, and Battle of Yavin training.

With our R2D2 Seesaw kids got to use the Force. A seesaw is a simple machine that uses work (or force) to lift an object! The fulcrum, seen at the bottom of the seesaw above, helps to make that force of lifting a friend possible.

Dronesium which featured Millennium Falcon drones and drones kids could fly. Our special controllers made flying the drones easy for novices. For many kids this was likely the first time they’ve ever flown a drone.

And finally the coolest activity we got to bring to our guests during Presidents’ Day weekend was our Battle of Yavin training! Myself and a Marketing intern, Kelly, got to create a large model of the Death Star for kids to hit and it what a huge hit it was! Kids got to literally launch straw rockets at the Death Star to try and take it down like in the Battle of Yavin. During this training, kids got to launch straw rocket x-wings by using rocket launchers that demonstrated how flight happens by giving kids the opportunity to create and experiment with different variables that make flight possible. Such factors the kids got to test included trajectory angles and differing launch energies that made it possible for the kids to directly launch and hit their X-Wings at our model of the Death Star!

We hope you guys had a blast at Science, Sabers, and Star Wars and enjoyed our activities we brought out for you! Be sure to check out more photos and video from Science, Sabers, and Star Wars.

Public Programming blog by Megan Brown. Megan is an Exhibition Lead for our Young Learner programming at the Science Center.