These activities can be done by kids on their own, in class or with their families. They may be adapted for many ages and abilities. Some require supplies like paper, crayons or marshmallows. Others involve visiting websites or just using your brain and imagination!

Did you know that the architects of the Empire State Building got their idea from looking at a pencil?

• Take a look at something from your desk or your room. Imagine and draw a building (or a car!) that follows the shape of that object.
• Learn all about skyscrapers at www.skyscraper.org, the website for the Skyscraper Museum in New York City.

The first dinosaurs appeared about 228 million years ago. Humans have been around only 130,000 years.

• Draw a timeline on a piece of paper (or several pieces of paper taped together) or a mural. Draw or cut out pictures to mark the arrival of dinosaurs and humans as well as other important events.
• Check out http://www.ology.amnh.org to learn about all the "ologists" who work at the American Museum of Natural History, like paleontologists, archeologists, and marine biologists. The Museum says an "ologist" is anyone who follows their curiosity about something and keeps at it until they get answers….and then has a hundred new questions. Does that sound like you? What type of "ologist" might you like to be?

Make an alphabet book of your town.

• If you do this as a class, each student can make one page with a poem, photos or pictures for a single letter. Put the pages together into a class book that each child can take home for a few days. Older students can make alphabet books about their town for younger students in the school (or as a gift for a relative).
• Include a map showing your A-to-Z places, like the map at the end of New York, New York!

Make an alphabet book of your town.

• If you do this as a class, each student can make one page with a poem, photos or pictures for a single letter. Put the pages together into a class book that each child can take home for a few days. Older students can make alphabet books about their town for younger students in the school (or as a gift for a relative).
• Include a map showing your A-to-Z places, like the map at the end of New York, New York!

Fifth Avenue is a long and important street in New York City. Find out about a main street in your city, town or neighborhood.

• Has it changed? What kinds of stores used to be there? What is there now?
• Talk to older people in your family or at a senior center. Record their memories of what the main street used to be like.
• Visit a newspaper archives or a historical center in your town to see old photographs and stories about your town's main street.

If you could design your own park…

• …what would you include? Central Park in New York City has ponds, a boathouse, a carousel, a zoo, lots of grass and trees, horse-drawn carriages, and even a Dairy where kids used to drink milk.
• Make a map of your park. Include sidewalks or trails and descriptions or pictures of the activities and objects you want to include.
• What rules would you put on signs at your park (or would your park have no rules)?

The Brooklyn Bridge was the world's longest suspension bridge when it was completed.

• Check out http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig to learn about different kinds of bridges.
• Try building your own bridge with toothpicks and tiny marshmallows. www.nbtc.cornell.edu/mainstreetscience/ kitlib/getlessonplan.php?id=48 and http://www.derry.k12.nh.us/dvs/staff/pace/dpeters/toothpickbridges.html

Trains were once the most important form of passenger transportation in the U.S.

• Suppose you had to get from Washington, DC to New York City (about 250 miles). Find out how long it would have taken you in the days of the horse drawn wagon; after the invention of the steam locomotive; by car before interstate highways were built. How long does it take to drive nowadays? By plane?
• Imagine an even faster way to travel in the future. Design the vehicle or system.
• Check out Education Station on the New York Transit Museum website http://www.transitmuseumeducation.org/.

Have a Harlem Renaissance party in your class.

• Listen to jazz by musicians like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.
• Read poems or stories by James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston.
• Find out more at http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem.
• Find out about artists from Harlem who are performing today like the Harlem Boys Choir or the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

The Plaza Hotel serves afternoon tea and many fancy dinners. If you owned a restaurant, what would it be like?

• Would it be a snack shop or a fancy restaurant? Or a restaurant on a space station in the future? Design a menu for your restaurant. Will you have a kids' menu? Don't forget to add prices for everything. Exchange menus; take orders and figure out how much you have to pay - including a tip!
• Or have a fancy tea party at school. Figure out how much ice tea, lemonade and cookies or cupcakes are needed and decide who will bring what. Dress up for the occasion.

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