Life is a Challenge

Several years ago my children were really into the Fetch with Ruff Ruffman show on PBS.  The host, Ruff, would give the contestants “science challenges” to complete.  It was always entertaining to watch how the contestants went about completing their challenge.  At home we would often complete our own science challenges downloaded from the PBS Kids website http://www.pbs.org/parents/fetch/activities/act/index.html .

One day during that same time period I was pushing my middle child, who was always very particular about the way everything was done, on the swing.  She kept pointing out what I was doing wrong, and giving me very detailed instructions on exactly how she wanted to be pushed.  Finally, exasperated, I said, “If you are going to be difficult I am not going to push you at all.”  She replied, shocked, “But mom, this is your challenge.”

Turns out she was not trying to be difficult, just trying to make up a challenge for me.  Her statement made me do a reality check…I did choose to be a mom and strive to be a good one.  And nothing we strive for is without its challenges.  Quite often now when parenting throws its curveballs I try to put on a Ruff Ruffman smile and remind myself, “This is your challenge.”

STEM

When you hear the word “stem” you usually think of various types of plants. However, when we think of STEM we are really focusing on something different. We at the Children’s Museum in Easton spoke with our outreach educators Krissy Cannizzo and Michelle VanVoorhis about what STEM really means and how we’re using it to enhance your child’s education!

The acronym STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

“The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition works to support STEM programs for teachers and students at the U. S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies that offer STEM related programs,” explains Michelle, “Members of the STEM Coalition believe that our nation must improve the way our students learn science, mathematics, technology and engineering and that the business, education, and STEM communities must work together to achieve this goal.”

Many children grow up learning to be fearful of these fields. They think they are boring or too hard or simply follow in their parents’ footsteps. If you despise these subjects, there is a good chance your children will learn that from you. However, through implementing STEM ideologies the coalition aims to garner more interest in these subjects for the bettering of your children’s education, and ultimately, our society.

As Michelle expands on this idea she says, “My aim is for children to feel that science, technology, engineering, and math are activities they can enjoy doing.  Through these fun activities, children can develop basic understandings and be inspired to continue to pursue interests in these areas.  Parents can also come to the understanding that STEM is not ‘just for boys’ or ‘just for smart people’. “

You may be asking, “how can math, science, and technology be easy?” Well, there are actually many simple activities you can do that use these principles if only you look at them in different ways.

Krissy provides us some examples: “Yesterday I was at a YMCA in West Roxbury where the children built (engineered) boats then tested the strength and durability of their designs using weighted mainipulatives.  I then incorporate mathematics in the experiment by challenging them to add and subtract weight.  

Our second project involved testing and mixing amounts of food coloring to water (mathematics) to make the primary colors and then giving them the opportunity to explore and mix colors on wax paper ( science/chromatology).  After using paper towels to blot up the mixed colors, the children could let the paper towels dry and construct (engineer) butterflies.  

The last project provided the children to briefly learn about the history of dinosaurs and their extinction through the ice ages.  I gave each child a cup of ice with a dinosaur frozen inside which they can explore ways to excavate using salt, warm water vs. cold water, etc.”

There are a lot of different activities parents and families can do with their children that promote this type of developmental learning. Your children will be learning while having fun!

Krissy says, “Visit the http://www.connectsemass.org/stem/ website along with the PBS Zoom and Fetch sites that can recommend activities, games and books, visit their local libraries especially this summer.  The local libraries in the SAIL Network are offering free workshops related to STEM, and of course visit the Children’s Museum in Easton where STEM can be found in all the exhibits.”

The Children’s Museum in Easton works hard to incorporate STEM in both the museum and its programs. Michelle shows us that STEM is incorporated in “The Fetch lab, many of the drop in classes, the Raceways, Wild Place…and parents can incorporate STEM questions almost anywhere, such as counting, estimating, predicting, building, designing, comparing, etc.” The Museum even offers Education Outreach programs that come to you! Check them out here: http://www.childrensmuseumineaston.org/educationoutreach0.aspx

No matter who you are, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math are all important in the world we live in. The STEM program is great for getting your child off to the right start! Whether you begin trying some activities at home or you bring your children to our museum, keep these ideologies in mind and your children will be on a great track.

Happy Birthday to...US!

We invite you to celebrate the 20th birthday of The Children's Museum. Your participation and continous support in helping children and families become lifelong learners deserves applause..and cake!

The Children's Museum in Easton was founded in 1986 by four Easton residents, all mother of young children in search of hands-on educational experiences with their kids close to home. With overwhelming commitment and support, broad volunteer assistance, and donations from area residents and businesses, the Museum opened in 1991. Since then, the Museum has renovated the basement, better known as the FETCH!(tm) Lab, creating three floors of fun. About four years ago the Wild Place was added, giving children the option to explore outdoor learning opportunities. Today, over 50,000 people visit the Museum annually, including over 100 school groups.

Saturday, April 16 - Saturday, April 23 the Museum is excited to welcome two separate acts of magic and mystery, hosted by Awesome Robb of Awesome Robb's Adventures and Random Effects Entertainment's Matthew Graham. Not only may we have the chance to see a rabbit come out of a hat, we will be introduced to a variety of fun animals when we are joined by Matt and Melissa Gabriel of Animal World Experience. You've voted for your favorites, now see which animals made the cut!

What would a birthday party be without a cake, or five? Our bakery friends from Andrews Bakery, Big Y, Montillio's, and White's Bakery are baking us a cake day to make each celebration unique. We will be hosting an honorary cake cutter each day who has supported the Museum's mission for the past 20 years.

Create your own cupcakes, get some silly facepaint, or decorate your very own party hat. Whether you stop by to meet Ruff Ruffman and Smokey Bear, or just to take home your very own balloon animal, this is one party you won't want to miss!

(For a full list of April Vacation events, visit our website.)

- Kerri Welsh, PR Intern

Family Fun

One of the best features of the Children's Museum in Easton is the opportunity for parents and children to work together to learn and explore at the Museum. The possibilities are endless, from the arts and crafts room where they can make fun and creative projects, to the Enchanted Forest where kids can learn to tell stories to their parents, to the FETCH! Lab, where I see parents and children on a regular basis work together on the numerous projects we offer.

This week we have been working on gumdrop domes in the FETCH! Lab, and it has truly been a family experience. Parents worked with their children to help them design their domes, making them as strong as possible, while identifying patterns and shapes within their buildings. This is just one of the many examples of the opportunity for family interaction here at The Children's Museum in Easton.

Marshmallow Towers

I hope everyone enjoyed the February Vacation week, I know I did! We’re still been pretty busy down here in the Fetch Lab even with the big kids back to school. This week we’ve been building marshmallow towers. Kids have built towers that were really tall, funny shaped and leaning, but overall they were VERY creative. I made a few as well, including a pyramid, a hexagon and an octagonal shaped tower that was 5 layers tall, but it fell over. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back and redesign it! I know a lot of the kids were planning on going home and using the toothpicks and marshmallows in their houses to keep creating unique designs. You should try it at home too! I think it would be cool to try using the big marshmallows, or maybe the colored ones for a fun twist. Let me know how your towers come out at home!

When I haven’t been polishing my skills as a marshmallow architect, Danielle, one of the other interns, and I have been taking a close look at the For Kids page too see how we can make it even better than it already is. We have been tossing around a few ideas on how to change the available activities, and I think within a few weeks you should be seeing a lot of fun changes on the page. Any suggestions? Leave me a comment, I’d love to know what your new ideas for the For Kids page would be.

What to do During February Vacation Week

WOW! We're half way through February Vacation week already! The week is really flying by here at the museum. I know a lot of you folks are vacationing at home this year, and sometimes it gets a little tough sitting around the house. So instead of sitting around and watching television all vacation, why not try finding something fun to do at the house or some great local activities?

The museum is still running Operation Espionage throughout February Vacation, along with our regular exhibits throughout the museum. Our admission is only $6 a person, which is way less than that trip to the movies that you've been planning! If you’re looking to do more fun things around the house, we have a great Kids Only page that offers numerous activities you can do right in your own home, especially since we have more snow on the way. Have fun guys!

Operation Espionage

Hey guys! I hope you had a chance to drop by earlier today and join us for our Valentine's Day celebration. We had a great time making candy holders, valentine cards as well as some scrumptious chocolate lollipops! I can't wait for next year to make those yummy treats again. Thanks again to the Mix 98.5 Snowbreak Tour for dropping in and giving away some great stuff!

OH NO! Ruff Ruffman's favorite ice cream cone squeaky toy has gone missing! Who could have taken it!?! Looks like you'll have to join us for Operation Espionage during February Vacation Week here at the museum to help us solve the great Ice Cream Cone Caper! Investigate the evidence left behind at the crime scene to determine the culprit. Along the way we'll be making some neat spy gadgets to help us on our spy themed week.

Even though you'll be awfully busy helping Ruff find the thief, take some time to listen to our special visitors who'll be stopping by the museum all throughout vacation week. We'll get to spend some time learning about fingerprinting with the Easton Police, meet a member of the Beagle Brigade who'll be demonstrating how Apache, one of the USDA's best workers, sniffs out food at the airport and see how dogs are used by the State Police to investigate fires. I personally can't wait to meet Apache and here all about her exciting job!

See you next week!

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!

Look Who's New at the Museum!

Hi fellow bloggers! I'm Bridget, one of the new interns here at The Children's Museum in Easton. I'm a senior at Stonehill College right here in Easton, and this May I will be graduating (YIKES!) with a degree in English. It seems like just yesterday that I was making my way into Moreau Hall for kindergarten, and now I'm almost done with college!

I have a few different duties here at the museum. You can find me down in the Fetch! Lab on Wednesdays and Fridays from 9 am to 1 pm or so, working on some fun and exciting experiments. Since I've been here we've made hovercrafts out of balloons, old CDs and other materials that combined to make them soar across the table. Today we threw our weight around and learned about how our body balances.

In addition to my work out in the Fetch! Lab, I also have duties in the office, including being the new blogger for the museum. It looks like the previous interns have done a great job with the blog, so I hope I can keep it up! Keep dropping by to see what we're up to in the Fetch! Lab as well as some other great happenings here at the Children's Museum in Easton!

She's Here! She's Here!

Eliza, our new FETCH! Lab Associate has arrived! Actually she’s been here all summer but, just like Blossom, she’s been promoted this season. She’s the first person to hold this position, which make her a pioneer in the field. You may have met Eliza if you visited the FETCH! Lab this summer or came to any of the amazing Summer Drop-ins Days. We thought she did a great job so we’ve handed her more responsibility (we think she can handle it). You can visit Eliza in the Lab most Tuesday and Friday afternoons (3-5pm) as well as Sundays from 2-5pm (sorry, she won't be in this sunday, Oct 26) and she’ll also be in for some special activities. She’ll be working with our great intern Megan to come up with some really cool science challenges. As you may already know, Megan can be found in the Lab most Tuesdays (9am-noon) and Wednesdays (9am-3pm) and if your lucky you may run into one of our other great volunteers who help out throughout the week.

Brain Drain Be Gone!

Now that mid-summer is here, parents may be starting to worry about their children undergoing learning loss- what is known by many to be the ‘Summer Slide’. Dr. Ruth Peters made a number of great suggestions on how to fight the brain drain for The Today Show, suggesting local libraries, safe internet sites, summer camps, local museums, concerts, aquariums, parks, etc. All of these activities involve interactive forms of education, to keep the mind active and the body in motion throughout the summer.

We have a great ‘Summer Slide’ webpage with some statistics and additional links to information and suggestions on how to combat the phenomenon. Our Mini-camps, FETCH! Challenges and Summer Drop-in Days are a great place to start, and to top it all off, we're local!

Tim's Last Hurrah!

Alas, my semester is coming to an end. On May 18th, I will be graduating. And all of next week I will be in Hyannis, going to the beach every day (if it doesn’t rain). So since I will not be posting next week, this is my last blog entry. I know all my fans out there will be devastated, and children at the museum will no longer be able to experience FETCH!™ labs taught by me.

But there will be a bunch of great stuff coming up this summer!

Summer Drop-in Days will be happening every Thursday and Friday from July 10-August 29. Each Summer Drop-In day will include activities from 10:30-3 revolving around a specific theme. And the best part - all the activities will be related to your favorite FETCH! episodes! Learn to be a clown, learn about dog training and about some other cool creatures, play some instruments and take a trip to the Wild West.
You can check out the Museum's website for updates on the summer schedule.

Here's the first Monday post for those of you out there who can't wait for Friday. 411mommy asked a very good question in comment: is a 9 and 10 year old too old to go to the Children’s Museum in Easton? The answer is yes and no. For most of the activities during the week on a normal day they would be on the higher end of the age spectrum. But for my FETCH!™ labs they would be perfect! I often sit around twiddling my thumbs and although I enjoy the frequent visitors who are five and under, many of them do not grasp the concepts and challenges offered in my FETCH! Labs. Older children would be ideal. I teach the labs Wednesday and Friday mornings.
Also, special occasions such as school vacation weeks are more oriented to the older crowd that are on break from school. This upcoming April vacation week is a perfect example. From April 19th-April 27th, Saturday to Sunday of the vacation week, our theme will be “Masters and Masterpieces.” We will be looking at artist like Andy Warhol and Georgia O’Keeffe, and having local artisans come to demonstrate their craft. Come by and make your own work of art! We kick off the school vacation week with our "Spring Fling" on April 19th.

Greetings again. My Easter break was nice, as I had hoped, and the Pogues concert I mentioned earlier was incredible.
An academic development day (or whatever they’re called) brought many Foxboro students to the museum today. Stonehill has those random days off as well, and they’re always welcomed. It was nice to have an older crowd, since I mostly deal with children under five. I recently was given a giant box of goodies (stickers, pencils, posters, etc.) and was happy to hand them out to the children like a madman. Some children learned that wearing a Ray Allen jersey awards them extra prizes.
Spring arriving leads to the possibility of outdoor FETCH!™ labs (such as kite making), but with the off-and-on cold and rain I’m not getting too excited.
Our website has been updated by my talented and wonderful fellow intern Chris Vacchi (See picture below. And no, I didn’t tell Chris I was doing this). It’s much more colorful, and I believe Chris did an exemplary job.

New England Mamas had a recent post mentioning discount museum prices in Massachusetts. Of course, I have to shamelessly plus that with a mere six dollars (free to members and children under one) a child can experience three floors of fun in the Children’s Museum in Easton. Plus I hear a wonderful intern teaches FETCH! labs on the bottom floor of the museum a couple days a week.
Hope you have a great week, and I’ll be posting soon enough.

Well, the February Vacation week is over for me. The Ruff Ruffman™ scavenger hunt was a hit. I’m guessing it was because of the wonderful storyline that I wrote. We had a whole lot of guests this week including two police dogs, a motorcycle police officer, an FBI agent, and Secret Service agents. The metal detector we were loaned was also a hit. Even kids who didn’t participate in the scavenger hunt wandered around testing to see if anything in my presence was metal. At this point I’m inured to loud beeping noises.
Many kids were attracted to the FETCH! ™ aspect of the scavenger hunt because they were fans of the show. The CSI episode of FETCH aired about a thousand times this week so I could probably quote it word for word. One boy was the highlight of my week with a project he designed in the woodshop room. He asked, “Do you know Ruff?” I responded, “Absolutely I do.” So he gave me a sign that read, “Dear Ruff, Sorry about the girlfriend,” referring to the Whodunit? story I wrote (see entry below).
I just finished watching the Secret Service presentation and the kids loved seeing gas masks, wires, badges, and bulletproof vests. I was fascinated myself, and I have to admit I’m wearing the novelty badge each child received at the end of the presentation right now.The museum was mentioned on New England Mamas. It was an accurate review, and it can be seen here.