Tinkertown
Pushes and pulls, materials and design, motors and gears, coding and creation! Bring your students to imagine, design and create by building their imagination.
In this self-guided exhibition, excursion students will engage with the engineering design process by building cubby houses and other imaginative structures.
Solve challenges, send secret messages and invent wacky contraptions. There are endless possibilities for engineering and play-based learning.
Students will experience
- The engineering design process while engaging with hands-on design challenges
- Designing and building inventions with the end-user in mind
- Loose-parts and building materials to spark open-ended or guided tinkering
- Communication, coding and creation through interactive and manipulatable patterns and puzzles
- Building a soft cubby with masses of magnetic cushions
- Coding a message on a giant fidget popper wall
- Sending a secret message over the airwaves with whisper tubes
Students will learn
- Which shapes are the strongest and how we use this knowledge in design thinking
- How an object’s material, size, and shape impact its purpose, movement and function ·
- How to design an invention for the end-user ·
- How forces can be used to alter the speed and direction of objects ·
- How art is integrated into design and inventing
Extend your Tinkertown experience into your classroom with our curriculum-aligned teacher resource! Offering pre and post classroom activities as well as guides to creating meaningful tinkering time while exploring the exhibition.
Availability
Term 4, Monday to Friday
Until Friday 19 December
Duration: 1 hour
Student information
Years F to 6
Minimum 15 students
Maximum 60 students
Bookings
Exhibition
Self-guided exhibition visit
Victorian Curriculum Links
Physical Sciences
Level F-2
- the way objects move depends on a variety of factors including their size, shape and material
VC2S2U10 - pushes and pulls are forces that can change an object’s movement or shape and can be represented in terms of strength and direction
VC2S2U11
Related Program: Toys and Forces Show
Level 3-4
- forces, including frictional, gravitational, electrostatic and magnetic, can be exerted by one object on another through direct contact or from a distance and affect the motion (speed and direction) of objects
VC2S4U10
Related Program: Rollercoasters and Forces
Chemical Sciences
Level 3-4
- the properties of natural and made materials, including fibres, metals, glass and plastics, influence their use and re-use
VC2S4U05
Design and Technologies
Level F-2
- explore how technologies affect movement in products and systems
VC2TDE2C01 - explore the characteristics and properties of materials and components that are used to create designed solutions
VC2TDE2C04
Level 3-4
- describe how the properties of materials affect function in a product or system
VC2TDE4C04
Level 5-6
- explain how characteristics and properties of materials, systems, components and tools affect their use when producing designed solutions
VC2TDE6C04
Digital Technologies
Level F-2
- explore patterns in data and represent data as objects, pictures, symbols, numbers and words
VC2TDI2D01
Related Program: Rainbows, Shadows & Light STEM Workshop
Level 3-4
- recognise different types of data and explore how the same data can be represented differently depending on the purpose
VC2TDI4D01
Related Program: Introduction to Robots and Coding
Accessibility
Please view our accessibility page for general information. Contact our team on 13 11 02 or email us at [email protected] to discuss how we can support your visit.
Museums Victoria Learning Access Fund
The Museums Victoria Learning Access Fund aims to enhance access to our museums (Melbourne Museum, Scienceworks and Immigration Museum), programs and events by offering free or subsidised education programs for eligible schools. Find out more about the fund.
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