Valentine Sweets

The Children’s Museum kicked off the weekend with all kinds of Valentine’s Day activities. Art Exploration (held most Fridays from 10-10:45am) kept kids busy creating all kinds of Valentine’s Day art at several stations.

Kids learned how to beautifully blend colors to paint their paper hearts and created their own 3D collage, made entirely out of red objects. There were also stations set up for making Valentine’s Day bookmarks and fingerprinted cards.

Two floors down from Art Exploration, Hannaford’s was sponsoring a Valentine’s Day event of their own. The children learned how deliciously fun healthy eating can be by crafting their own chocolate bark treat. Toppings included heart healthy treats such as Kashi Heart Healthy Cereal, dried cranberries, dried apricots, and Cheerios.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, each child was able to make two chocolate bark treats, one to enjoy and one to share!

~ Kerri, PR Intern

Sharing is Caring Festival

During December and January, the Children’s Museum in Easton will celebrate the holiday season and the importance of providing good help to those in need. The Museum’s Sharing is Caring Festival is a series of holiday-themed events that help those in need and raise awareness for how children and families can give back to the community.

This month is our 20th Anniversary Campaign for Kids. It is important that we continue to provide a fantastic learning environment for kids in our area. When you give to our annual fund, you support quality educational experiences for all children in our community. For the Museum to be affordable to you, we need charitable support. We appreciate your consideration and help. Even if you can’t make a cash donation, there are more ways of donating during this holiday season. Here are just a few:

Come to our Cards for Kids events all month long, where kids will make cards in our art studio that will be distributed to organizations who serve those confined indoors by illness or disability. A special card from a child can lift a spirit and make a smile.

Starting Thanksgiving weekend, Museum visitors can donate to the Warm Hearts Drive and drop off new hats, mittens, and socks to help keep needy children’s heads, hands, feet and hearts warm during the winter.

For our popular Kids’ Holiday Shop, parents can donate new or gently used items for the kids to buy and wrap. Volunteers are on hand to help children select and wrap a perfect gift for mom, dad, friends and family. By donating, you will give kids the opportunity to buy, wrap, and give gifts to their loves ones.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is a symbol of strengthening communities, empowering individuals, and bridging barriers. On January 17th, we commemorate his legacy by celebrating The Martin Luther King Day of Service. It is never too young to learn the value of helping others. On the 17th the Museum offers a variety of arts and crafts projects inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. You can find more ways to give back to your community here.

We hope that these events offered by the Museum provides you and your family with a charitable Holiday Season. As you can see, there’s a lot of ways to give back to the community, and we hope you’ll take advantage of these opportunities or seek out your own! And even when the holidays end, remember there is always someone in need.

-Josh Nyer
Public Relations Intern

Have Your Own Winter Workshop! Part 1

Halloween was only a few weeks ago, but it's already time to start thinking about holiday season! Before you know it you will be in a whirlwind of holiday parties, recitals, visiting and of course those dreaded trips to a crowded mall. So this year, while there is still a little time left before the craziness of the season starts, take a look at some fun ways you can spend time with your family and enjoy the holiday season! Have your own "Winter Workshop" at home! Put your favorite holiday CD, a festive sweater (and maybe a smock over that! and prepare for a day of family fun, which will be educational, low-cost and environmentally friendly!

First up- holiday cards! There are so many ways to make your own cards! Simply buy basic blank cards, in any color- you can find them at local stores like Target and A.C. Moore. One fun way is to use potato stamps! Easy to make but adults definitely do the cutting!

1. First cut a potato in half.
2. Next draw out a design in marker on the potato- such as stars, snowflakes etc,
3. Then using a knife carefully cut away the excess potato until you are only left with the shape you want.
4. Now let the kids dip the stamps into paint and let them design the plain cards however they like! By making the cards themselves it create a truly unique cards that friends and family would love to have!


Another, less messy, way of using plain cards is to use office supplies! Yes, office supplies! For instance creating a tree on the card front is both easy to make and made of things you can find around the house.

1. For the tree itself use round green color coding labels, easily found at Staples (and if you dont have green stickers you can spray paint it green or use another color, be creative!). You can also have a counting lesson here too, by starting the tree with one sticker, then the next row two, then three and so on.

2. Once the shape of the tree is done decorate it with reinforcements and smaller 1/4 in color coding circle sticker labels (both also found at Staples.).

3. And lastly top the tree off with a star sticker! Using office supplies as decorations may sound funny at first, but it very budget friendly and really lets you stretch your creativity!


A great card to make is the "Santa" card. Here you will want to buy red card stock, available at craft stores such as A.C. Moore. (it is too late this year but after Christmas/Valentine's Day sales are great times to buy this at a discounted price.)

1. What you want to do next is make a "belt." You will also need sticker paper (found at Staples) and a can of spray paint in both black and gold. Once you spray the paper let it dry.
2. Have the kids cut out a rectangle the width of the card, remove the backing and stick to the card at the middle.
3. Then on the gold paper have them cut out a square, but you may want to cut another, smaller square inside the bigger square for them; then remove the backing and stick over the block of black- thus creating a belt!
4. Using some of the white sticker paper you have not painted cut out a fun shape; three of the sides will be straight and line up with the bottom and width of the card. The last part however, make a fun wavy shape to create fur at the bottom of Santa's coat.
5. Lastly you want you can add three black round stickers as buttons! and there you have it, a simply card that looks awesome!


Another great way to use those potato print stamps is to create your own wrapping paper. Yes, it sounds like this could be hard, but really nothing could be easier, promise! Simply go to a craft store and buy a roll (or rolls if you like) of craft paper, 30 in x 15 feet is a good size.

1. At home lay out the craft paper on the table; now you can either leave it plain or paint it a background color is you prefer. If you paint it make sure to let the paint dry. Then the fun can start!
2. Bring out those potato stamps and let the kids loose! Have them stamp in whatever paint color they want, using whatever shape they want! There are no rules except to have fun and be creative. Once it is dry you will have a unique wrapping paper that you can truly say is one of a kind!

We hope you have fun doing some, or all!, of these crafts! Look for a new holiday blog in two weeks!

Come Visit Us for Valentine's Day!

We've been awfully busy down in the FETCH! Lab this week. The FETCHers have returned from a dangerous space mission and their space capsules have fallen into the bottom of the ocean! Our visiting inventors have come downstairs and designed some creative devices to help retrieve the fallen capsules. It has been a little tricky to come up with the best hook, but everyone has done a terrific job. We've had some great minds here showing me their best designs for a rescue device. Shaila, Eliza and I will have to keep working at it for the rest of the week to make sure there are no abandoned capsules! Come stop by and help us out!

I know next week Ruff Ruffman will have us investigating something new, but you'll have to drop in and find out what we're experimenting with!

Cupid has been flying around the Museum getting us ready for his favorite holiday! On Friday, February 13 from 11- 4pm the Children's Museum in Easton will be having our annual Valentine's Day Celebration . I'll be on hand down in the Fetch! Lab as usual, but we'll have a fantastic heart-filled day throughout the Museum. We'll be making chocolate lollipops for a sweet treat to take home to your Valentine, as well as some fancy heart-shaped arts and crafts to make upstairs!

In addition to all of our great activities, I'm really excited for the visit from the Mix 98.5 Snowbreak Tour during our Valentine's Day celebration! The station will be raffling off lift tickets for different ski mountains as well as a bunch of other goodies! Free gifts and chocolate lollipops all in one day? Sounds like a great Valentine's Day to me!

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a Happy Holiday Season! The adoption certificate and photo of our adopted monkey arrived from the WWF and is on display in the FETCH! Lab. People have been voting on a name all week and it looks like "Bananas" is a runaway winner! Vacation week's been great as we have been visited by Cinco the Bloodhound, Douglas the Bernese Mountain Dog, bunnies, a snake, lizard and hedgehog.

The Museum's Family New Year's Parties were loads of fun, despite the snow. We had a confetti blast, the magic of Awesome Robb, made festive party hats and noise makers and got to meet Father Time! You can check out the pictures here.

Happy Halloween!

Hi! I'm Eliza, but if you stopped by our Halloween Romp last Saturday you might know me as the tooth fairy. To get into the Halloween spirit a couple of my friends and I went to a haunted house put together by a couple students from Mansfield High School. They did such a great job! I was so completely scared and had no idea what was coming for me next. The best part about this haunted house was that all the money they would go straight to the Mansfield Animal Shelter. One night alone raised just about 3,500 dollars, that's awesome! After being so scared from the haunted house I decided to carve a friendly pumpkin, not to mention the easiest pattern I could find. It came out pretty..well friendly. So what where you for Halloween? I ended up putting my tooth fairy costume with my very large but very pretty wings and took out my basket and became little red riding hood. My favorite story of all time! Halloween being the great holiday of free candy I had to go trick or treating. My friends and I went to every single house on the block, and when our bags were filled we went home and decided to count our candy. I have so much candy it's going to last me til Christmas!

Being in the Halloween spirit I have always wanted to know how witches' cauldrons bubble and in the Fetch! Lab this week I finally got a chance to find out how. If you too want to know how witches' do it find out here! If there is enough room in your stomach after eating all that Halloween candy come and visit Megan and I have a lot of cool things coming up this week, including making ice cream! We have even started our very own Fetch! Club and we want you to join! When you stop by we can sign you up and then make sure you keep coming back to complete six challenges to receive a pretty cool prize! Also make sure you stop by before Tuesday, November 4th to vote for your favorite animal! Grown-ups aren't the only ones who can vote!

Oh ya! By the way this week instead of coming in on Tuesday, I'll be here Thursday and November 11th Veterans Day 10-4pm because its exploding rainbows that day!