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Ten-year-old Diya Naren, of West Lebanon, plays with a circuits table at the Montshire Museum of Science Tuesday, July 8, in Norwich, Vt.. The activity is part of the Museum’s “Toys: The Inside Story” exhibition, which is on display through Sept. 1. (Courtesy Montshire Museum of Science — Honor Hingston-Cox) -
Eleven-year-old Phineas Soucy, of Hanover, plays with a gears that are part of the Montshire Museum of Science’s “Toys: The Inside Story” exhibition on Tuesday, July 8, in Norwich, Vt. (Courtesy Montshire Museum of Science — Honor Hingston-Cox)
NORWICH — Phineas Soucy approached a display containing the innards of a Hokey Pokey Elmo toy at the Montshire Museum of Science.
“It looks a ton more creepy,” on the inside than the outside, the 11-year-old Hanover resident who goes by Phin observed to me Tuesday morning at the Norwich-based nonprofit organization.
Phin was one of 15 fifth- and sixth-graders enrolled in a weeklong “Lab Rats” STEM camp at the Montshire who was walking around the museum’s new exhibition “Toys: The Inside Story.”
The displays feature the “guts” of toys to show how gears, pulleys and circuits — among other components — make them work.
During each weeklong camp, kids get a chance to explore each of the Montshire’s exhibits at their own pace. Lab Rats costs $375 a week for Museum members and $400 a week for non-members.
“They always beg to go back to the toy exhibit,” Gus Devaul, education program manager and STEM education specialist at the Montshire, told me. Some campers even prefer it to the longstanding “Bubbles: Science in Soap” exhibition.
Since Lab Rats is an engineering camp, “they like seeing the inside of things,” Devaul added.
That was definitely true for Phin: After examining Elmo (a toy he didn’t own as a youngster but had some familiarity with), he moved on to a display that showed how gears work together to make toy parts rotate. “When gears of different sizes turn together, the bigger gear turns slowly. The smaller gear turns fast,” a description next to three gears reads.
“It’s really cool,” Phin said.
Phin has a huge interest in the way things work: That morning, he’d brought in a toy car he built out of popsicle sticks — “all by hand,” he assured me — two batteries, two motors “a ton of wires” and two buttons.
He hoped his time at camp would teach him more skills to apply to future creations.
Across the room, Diya Naren was looking at Hungry, Hungry Hippos, the classic board game known for its loud noise (or at least that’s what I most remember about it from my childhood).
The 10-year-old West Lebanon resident was somewhat familiar with the game, but its inner workings didn’t hold her interest as much as a nearby circuits table where she manipulated different metal bars to make lights on the board turn on and off.
“It’s fun,” Diya said about exploring the exhibition.
A few minutes later, Phin motioned to me from in front of the game Operation. The exhibition uses the classic board game to explain how circuits and batteries work. Players use tweezers to pick out small items embedded in a plastic playing surface. A loud buzz is emitted when a player touches the metal sides in the board.
“It’s kind of hard sometimes,” Phin told me. He shared his strategy for the game: The rubber band is the easiest to remove. The hardest are the butterfly and horse, in part because they’re smaller.
Camp counselor Goose Clifton, a 21-year-old from Plainfield, said the exhibition was fun for staff too.
Clifton has a background in automotive technology and said “a lot of the same machines that make toys work also make cars work,” like gears. Through the roughly 45 minutes the campers spent at the exhibition, Clifton checked in with campers, occasionally offering suggestions.
“(The kids) have a lot of fun with the circuits and pulleys,” they said. “The giant Etch A Sketch also gets a lot of compliments from the kids.”
Another favorite that morning appeared to be Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs, which campers used to create their own structures. There also were larger Tinkertoy-like pieces that kids used to build items they could sit on.
Ten-year-old Hanover residents Maya Gunning, Hanna Fu and Julia Elizalde spent most of their free time trying to make a small rocking chair.
The trio tried using rope, plastic screws and bolts to stabilize the sides, which attached to two curved pieces that made the item rock back and forth.
In an initial test, the sides of their creation didn’t hold and Julia fell backward the very short distance to the ground.
The girls laughed, then got back to work making adjustments.
“Are you tightening these really tight?” Julia asked Hanna, referring to the screws holding up the sides. Hanna jumped into action. Maya told me the trio were designing the device so that one person could sit on one end while another person rocked it back and forth on the other.
After a few more minutes, they gave it another go. Maya volunteered to sit on it.
“And it works!” Hanna exclaimed.
Clifton looked on, smiling at the campers as they put their problem-solving skills to work.
“After a little bit of time, they find something that’s their favorite and go back to it,” Clifton said.
Then it was time to clean up. The campers put the toys away and got in line, ready to jump into another day of building and creating.
“Toys: The Inside Story” is on display through Monday, Sept. 1. Admission is $18 for children 2 to 17 and $21 for adults. Twin States residents with an EBT card, adult Medicaid card, or free/reduced price school meals letter can visit the museum for $3. Visit montshire.org for more information. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
CORRECTION: Phineas Soucy uses he/him pronouns. A previous version of this story misgendered him.
