You can use the following guiding questions to have a conversation with your child about the video:

• How are the earliest planes different from planes that we see now?
• Similarly to how quickly planes evolved, what have you seen change rapidly in your lifetime?
• Would you like to fly in any of these early planes?

• In this activity, you and your child will use any kind of bottle, cardboard, tape and materials to decorate in order to make a plane.
• This plane can also be used as a piggy bank — just add a small opening at the top.
• This activity provides opportunities to practice fine motor skills and the creativity that comes along with making and decorating your own plane.
• Encourage your child to think back to the video you have watched — ask them to think about what era plane they would like to create or ask them to create a plane of the future.

Below are suggested sing-along songs around the theme of planes:

• We All Go Traveling By
• I'm a Little Airplane
• Let's Be Planes

Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
Heroes of the Sky

Greenfield Village
Wright Home
Wright Cycle Shop

After watching the video, you and your child can talk about it using these guiding questions:

• How does this car look different from the car that we drive/the cars that we see?
• In this video, they describe Henry Ford as an innovator — what do you think this means?
  • Where do we see innovation in our lives today?
  • In what ways are you an innovator?
• Henry Ford built this car with materials that were readily available (iron, leather, chains). What would you make with the items around you right now? (e.g., wood from a table, glass from dishes, any tools lying around).

• Carrying the theme of innovation and using materials that you have to create, you and your child can make a rubber band car. Note: If your child is unable to add the rubber bands, you can still make a working car without them.
• This involves collecting materials from your home, understanding how those materials can fit together to make a working car (disks are round so they should be the wheels), and then designing/decorating the car.
• This activity can also allow your child a tactile learning experience, as well as an opportunity to create something from scratch using their own understanding and creativity.

• This article describes how to engage your child in various learning activities using their interest in cars. These activities include:
  • Use cars to practice math skills. Take any toy cars that you have, and ask your child to use the cars in different addition and subtraction (or multiplication and division) problems. For example, take a pile of cars and ask your child to solve the problem 2+3=? using the cars. Take two cars and three cars and put them together to make five.
  • Use cars to practice sorting and organizing skills (e.g., sort the cars by color, sort cars into cars and trucks).
  • Patterns: Show your child a pattern in colors (yellow, red, yellow, red) and ask your child to create the same pattern using cars.

Below are suggested sing-along songs around the theme of cars:

• The Wheels on the Bus
• Driving in My Car
• We All Go Traveling By
• Life is a Highway from Cars

Here are some places in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village that you can visit to learn more about cars:

Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
Driving America
Driven to Win: Racing in America

Greenfield Village
Henry Ford’s Model T District

• Bagley Avenue Workshop
• Ford Home
• Ford Motor Company
• Henry Ford Theater
• Take a Model T ride

You can prompt conversation before and after watching this video using these guiding questions:

• What kinds of foods do you like to eat? Do you ever wonder where they came from?
• Can you imagine how your favorite food grows? What makes you curious?
• How do farms work and why are they important?
• How do you think the tractor changed the way we get our favorite foods?

• Preface this activity with the question: “What tools help farmers grow our favorite foods?” Refer back to the video that you watched about tractors being a revolutionary tool in agriculture.
• For this craft, you will cut out shapes that make up the word “Tool,” which your child can construct into a tractor.
• This activity allows practice for word recognition as well as shape organization.

• Choose a vegetable or a herb that is relatively easy to grow. One possibility is basil, as it grows quickly and does not require much maintenance, but also has a fragrant aroma that stimulates our senses.
• Here are some other foods that are easy to grow indoors.
• During this process, encourage your child to think back to what they learned about tractors. Though they may not need tractors inside, what are some other tools they may need to grow their plant?
• This activity is also a way for your child to practice patience in watching their plant grow as well as responsibility in taking care of their plant.
• Celebrate when the plant has grown and you can use it in your own food.

Below is a suggested sing-along song around the theme of gardens:

• The Green Grass Grew All Around

Here are some places in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village that you can visit to learn more about gardening and agriculture:

Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
Agriculture and the Environment

Greenfield Village
Cider Mill
Cotswold Cottage
Daggett Farmhouse
Dr. Howard’s Office and Garden
Firestone Farm
Garden of the Leavened Heart
George Washington Carver Cabin
Luther Burbank Garden Office and Garden
Mattox Family Home
Soybean Lab Agricultural Gallery
Susquehanna Plantation

After watching the video, take some time to talk about what you saw. Use the following questions as a guide:

• Which train was your favorite? Why was it your favorite?
• What similarities did you see between the trains?
• What differences did you see?
• If you were to make your own train, what would it look like? What special features would it have?

After learning about some unique trains from the video and talking about what your train might look like, create your own unique trains with this craft:

• Create train cars using different colored painted fingerprints. After they dry, add more details to the fingerprints using pens and markers.
• Encourage individuals to use what they know about trains to draw in the parts of their trains (e.g., what a caboose looks like, where the smoke comes from).

Participants will use the fingerprint trains that they have created, and make them into conversation trains in order to practice conversation with new and unfamiliar people.

• Use a train as a metaphor for a conversation. People take turns talking on a topic. People listen and answer back and forth. They can both change the topic if they both want to.
• Use trains to teach important social and conversation skills.
• Ask participants to have their train cars "talk to each other."
• What does a good conversation look like?
• What would an unsuccessful conversation look like? What would make it unsuccessful?
• As participants are thinking about these conversations, practice both good and bad conversational skills so the difference is clear.

Below is a suggested sing-along song around the theme of trains:

• I've Been Working on the Railroad

Here are some places in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village that you can visit to learn more about trains:

Railroads in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
Allegheny Steam Locomotive
Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Passenger Coach Replica
Canadian Pacific Snow Plow
Ingersoll-Rand Number 90 Diesel Locomotive
Railroad Refrigerator Car
"Sam Hill" Steam Locomotive

Daily Museum Activities:
Model Train Demonstration

Railroad Junction in Greenfield Village
Baldwin Locomotive
Detroit, Toledo and Milwaukee Roundhouse
Edison Steam Locomotive
Railroad Turntable
Smiths Creek Depot
Torch Lake Steam Locomotive
Weiser Railroad Ride