With this kit, students will create simple kites using basic art supplies.  Kites are something that kids know and understand and can also tell us something about the wind.  A kite won't fly if it isn't windy and if it can fly, the direction of flight and strength of flight can tell us about wind speed and direction.

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With this kit, students use a windsock to find out what direction the wind is coming from.  This is very important to know when designing a wind farm. Students will also be introduced to the Beaufort Scale and other ways to “find the wind.”

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With this kit, students will build an anemometer to measure the wind speed.  Using lessons from NOAA and NEED, the kit includes simple materials such as dixie cups and straws.  Once built, students can measure the wind speed using a table or using math.  Real anemometers are also available with this kit so students can see what they are striving to build.

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With this kit, students will be challenged with creating something that spins in the wind and then ultimately lifts a cup that is filled with weights.  We call this the MacGyver Challenge because students are given a bag of seemingly random supplies that they must use to make a windmill.  This is a great introductory activity to wind energy as well as engineering design.

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This kit is for an activity in the NEED wind curricula.  Students use simple supplies like straws, paper, and a cup to make a pinwheel design that then lifts paperclips.  This is a great introductory activity for students to wind energy.

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The REcharge Labs Sail Car Kit has all the supplies students need to build a working sail car. Students will build sails to catch the wind in order to move the Sail Car as far as possible. They should use the scientific method to isolate and adjust variables to design a sail car that travels farthest in the wind. Experiment with the number, design, shape, and angle of sails to control the direction, speed, and distance of the Sail Car.

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For kids of all ages, discovering wind energy using the firefly™ is easy, fun and affordable. The firefly is a small turbine designed to light an LED when placed in the path of wind. Use your firefly to display how wind can generate electricity! The firefly is simple to assemble and requires no tools.

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The Wind Turbine Junkyard is a kit that was inspired by the book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind where the main character of the book builds a wind turbine from parts he finds in a junkyard.  The kit is simply a bin of PVC parts and students use these parts to assemble a PVC wind turbine – enough for 4 turbines.  Follow-up acitivities to this kit include the KidWind Clip Hub, the Blade Characteristic Investigation Stations, and the Wind Turbine Blade Design Challenge.

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The blades on a wind turbine are meant to “catch” the wind and spin the generator to convert kinetic energy into mechanical energy and then into electric energy. The design of the blades determines the amount of wind that will be “caught.” In this activity, students will design their own blades for the model turbine. Students use any materials to create the blades, attach them to dowels and the hub, and then test the efficiency of those blades by reading the voltmeter. This kit comes with a long version (3-class) and short version (1-class) lesson plan, extension activities, and student hand-outs. For the shorter version of this activity, students will test and analyze the included blade designs.

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The KidWind MINI is a smaller turbine that students can build and experiment with to produce enough electricity to power LED bulbs, a power output board and other load devices. The blade design kit allows for students to make and test the effect of pitch and shape of the wind turbine blades. This kit includes three MINI turbines that can be combined in a series or parallel circuit to produce even more electricity and demonstrate the effectiveness of a wind farm while testing the placement of turbines on a farm.

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Students are given a problem-solving activity in which they must design an object resembling a wind turbine platform that will float in water and remain stationary under turbulence. Students will work in groups and create one object to test. Each group’s object will be tested in a “Wind-Wave Tank”.  The inventions will be evaluated based on  performance and manufacturing material.

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Career kits aim to give students exposure to the job-specific hardware, software, and equipment used in jobs in the renewable energy industry.  This kit has the equipment that wind turbine service technicians use to climb wind turbines and work on the generator and other parts of the turbine.  Encourage students to try the equipment on, handle the tools, and watch the interviews.

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With this kit, students will collect wind speed data from a variable-speed fan and power output from a standard KidWind wind turbine in order to better understand the concept of a power curve.  The kit comes with one variable speed fan, vernier anemometer, KidWind wind turbine with different blade sets and different nacelles, and vernier energy go direct sensor.   The activity lesson plan has ideas for how to create stations for students to rotate through since there is just one set-up for the power curve data collection.

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