Earth Week Vacation Programs 2014

Eli Whitney Museum

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We are a crowded world, hungry for resources. Reports on the environment too often bring bad news. To celebrate this Earth Week, we looked for workshops that honor positive efforts to care for our planet. These are not global stories. These are projects that friends and apprentices – people connected to the Museum – are participating in to make many sensible, small choices that will add up to make a big difference. Each day long (9am – 3pm) Workshop combines learning, doing, creating, sharing, playing.

Fee per day: $60 ($56 for members)

Before and after care (7:30 am – 5:30 pm) is available at $8 per hour.

Click on each program for complete information and link to registration.

Monday, April 14th

Befriending Bees

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Colony Collapse Disorder is a still-mysterious epidemic that is threatening honeybee colonies that are essential partners in plant life cycles. Construct a bee house for solitary mason bees who are filling in for honeybees. Construct a Beez Box to learn the dance language of bees that organize their clever communities to find food efficiently. Then Dance.

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Monday, April 14th

Building Better Batteries

The Italian Volta built the first useful chemical batteries in Eli Whitney's time. A hundred years later, powerful batteries were bulky, so Henry Ford powered his early automobiles with gasoline. Two hundred years after Volta, we are struggling to catch up on battery technology for cars. In the last 30 years, engineers have made impressive progress on batteries for phones and laptops. So big battery progress is likely.

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Monday, April 14th

Tynker with Coding All Day

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Ages 8 – 9

Tynker is a new way to learn programming, part of Code.org's "Hour of Code" project. Learn the basic concepts using drag-and-drop "logic blocks" which snap together like puzzle pieces to solve puzzles.

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Tuesday, April 15th

Sourcing Locally: the Heidi, (Caseus & Whole G) Story

Sourcing Locally: the Heidi, (Caseus & Whole G) Story thumbnail

Heidi is the story of a young Swiss girl who finds health and strength in the simple mountain cabin of her grandfather and the goats that provide them milk and cheese. Life in the city is far less healthy. The story was published 135 years ago.

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Tuesday, April 15th

Sharing Solar Simply

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Uganda, in east Africa, is a nation with the potential to develop modern sources of electrical power. It has mighty rivers and some hydropower dams. In the past 30 years, oil fields have been discovered. Experiment with a solar charger and LEDs (light emitting diode). Construct a nightlight for your room or back yard. Experiment with technology with the potential to change lives simply.

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Tuesday, April 15th

Monkey Around with Scratch

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Ages 11 – 14

Gorillas was first published in 1991 to demonstrate IBM's Q-BASIC program interpreter, which introduced the children of the 90s to coding. We will re-create this classic in Scratch, MIT’s web-based tool that brings coding to another generation.

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Wednesday, April 16th

Caring for Coral

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Corals are sea animals that are colorful and flexible. Their colonies form reefs that hold to the sea floor and host thousands of marine species. Global warming is threatening the reefs.

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Wednesday, April 16th

Cultivating Cotton Conscientiously

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Cotton is an ancient fiber. Eli Whitney demonstrated that machines could reduce labor in the steps from field to your wardrobe. But the cotton gin was one small step in a succession of inventions that has taken far too long. Bayard Winthrop is a unique master of that tradition. His company American Giant has organized reasonable resources – growing, spinning, weaving and sewing – first rate machines and people – to produce sportswear without compromises.

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Wednesday, April 16th

3D Print My Own Minion

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Ages 11 – 14

Everybody needs minions: good humored, loyal yellow henchpersons, ever ready for adventure. Design your very own, with their own good or bad hair, specialized tools, and personality. Then learn the principles of 3D design using the simple but powerful web-based TinkerCAD to prototype your ideas.

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Thursday, April 17th

Rescuing Elephants

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Elephants have served civilizations for thousands of years. They have worked, they have fought, they have inspired, they have entertained. Like humans elephants feel a complex range of emotions, including love. The strongest instances of which are shown between a mother elephant and her baby. The calf is so small compared to the adult that it walks beneath its mother, who incredibly never steps on or trips over it. Now they are endangered and many elephants are left orphans.

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Thursday, April 17th

Rescuing Wood

Eccentric 'walking' wooden stool

Find the beauty in rescued wood. Construct, smooth and finish a small stool. Then cut shape and finish a keepsake box for yourself or for a gift. Discover the beauty in wood given a second life.

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Thursday, April 17th

Scratch Remix Workshop

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Ages 11 – 14

MIT’s Scratch allows you to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art - and share your creations on the web. All of the code shared on Scratch is “open source,” which means you have the ability to look inside, to puzzle out how it works, and “remix” projects as your own by adding new art or new code.

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Friday, April 18th

Planting Helpful Seeds

Seed bomb

Learn the art of seeds. Weather permitting, we will collect seeds from the wild flowers along our trails. Learn the basic types of seeds. Learn to recycle newspaper into starter pots. Build a small cold frame to protect your seeds germinating in the still-cool days of early spring. Start plants that will enrich any yard. Fill a notebook with drawings of the plants we are learning to encourage.

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Friday, April 18th

3D Print My Own Interchangeable Building Blocks

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Ages 11 – 14

Lego©, KRE‑O©, Sluban©, Built-to-Rule©, MegaBloks©, Super Blox©... everybody wants to be your favorite building block. Which do you like best? Each brand has its selling points. And each is built to a standard size within its own environment.

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