I hope you enjoyed Who Will I Be? by Abby Huntsman with pictures by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff. What kind of helper do you want to be? Do you want to help kids learn, help animals get better, help take care of people, or help people find their new favorite book? There are lots of ways to be a helper!

This month's craft is making helper puppets!

You Will Need:

• toliet paper tube
• printed coloring page
• crayons/markers/colored pencils
• tape or glue
• scissors

This week's theme is vision and illusions! The four activities to go along with it are Bird in a Cage, Hole in your Hand, Rotating Cube, and Creating Sun-catchers.  

All activities can be found in the Children's Gallery from 8/18 to 8/22. 

The first activity is Bird in a Cage which is an example of an optical illusion! This fun activity involves a string and a paper bird. Come see if you can get your bird in the cage!

The second activity is called Hole in your Hand, where you roll up a piece of paper and create a hole in your hand! This safe and cool activity is another example of an optical illusion. 

Rotating Cube is the third activity! This awesome activity allows you to construct a 3D cube and watch it move around, using visionary science!

And, in honor of our last week of Summer STEM, we have a fourth activity called Creating Sun-catchers! We will be painting on carousel related images and once they dry, we'll watch them catch the sunlight in the open windows.

We hope you will join us for the last week of summer STEM and come experience visionary tricks with us! ​

Our STEM theme this week is Amusement Rides!

​The three activities this week are Pendulum Swing, Wheel and Axle Car Ride, Cotton Ball Slingshot Ride.

​All activities can be located in the Children's Gallery from 8/11 to 8/15. 

The first activity, Pendulum Swing, is playing around with a pendulum! This fun activity teaches balance, equilibrium, gravity, and momentum, which are all major parts in operating a carousel. 

The second activity is Wheel and Axle Car Ride, where you can decorate and construct your own car, just like the ones in Kiddie Land! This activity also shows you how a wheel and axle works, which is a very important part of operating a carrousel.  

The third activity is called Cotton Ball Slingshot Ride, where you get to launch cotton balls as high up into the air as you can! 

We hope to see you this week to have fun with us and learn about Amusement Rides and how they relate to carrousels and STEM!  

This week's STEM theme is Coding! Our activities are Spheros, Follow the Leader, and Binary Bracelets!

​All activities can be found in the Children's Gallery this week, 8/4 to 8/8. 

The first activity, Spheros, is an Ipad game where you can control a robot ball using coding and sequencing methods! This fun activity is super awesome to learn about coding and technology.

The second activity is Follow the Leader, which is a simple game of following directions to reach a goal! However, it gets tricky if the directions aren't in the right order. Come and figure out the best way to reach the goal!

The third activity is called Binary Bracelets, where you can use binary coding to create your own cool bracelet! 

​We hope to see you this week to learn more about coding, which is a big part of operating the carrousels and band organs here! 

This week's STEM theme is Music and Sound! All activities are located in the Children's Gallery, from 7/28 to 8/1. 

The three activities for this week are Osmos, Making Panpipes, and Making Maracas.

Osmos, our first activity, is an Apple Ipad game meant for kids of all ages! This fun game helps you use sequencing and coding to make music and unlock cool characters for your band.
​Fun fact: These concepts are also used to allow the band organs to make music, which you hear when you ride the carrousel! 

Come shake things up when you make your very own maraca or test your skills at whistling with your own set of panpipes! Making Panpipes and Maracas are both really fun crafts to use common objects and turn them into musical instruments.

Come make music with us this week and join the Education Crew's one-week only band with your new knowledge of music and sound! We hope to see you there!

This week's STEM theme is engineering! All activities are located in the Children's Gallery, from 7/21 to 7/25.

The three activities for this week are Popsicle Stick Gears, Balance Robot, and Paper Airplane Races!

The first activity is called Popsicle Stick Gears, where you can build your own gears using popsicle sticks! At the end of the week, we hope to have a huge working board of gears. This is a fun way to explore how machinery operates!

The second activity is Balance Robot, where you can construct your own robot and make sure it doesn't fall over! This activity is an example of the way the carrousels have to balance when they operate! 

The third activity is called Paper Airplane Races, where you can craft your own airplane out of paper and race it against other airplanes! This activity is a fun way to learn about aerodynamics and participate in a competitive, friendly race. 

We hope to see you this week to come build things with us and learn more about engineering! 

This week's STEM theme is Electricity! All activities are located in the Children's Gallery.

There are three activities to do this week! They are called Jumping Moths, Static Lift, and Constructing Circuits. 

Jumping Moths is a fun activity where you can create your own moth out of tissue paper and watch it jump in a box! This activity shows static electricity and it is a fun way to see how it works. 

The second activity is called Static Lift, which provides another example of static electricity! We will be playing around with a balloon and seeing what items we can and cannot pick up with it.  

The third activity is called Constructing Circuits, which is a very fun activity to show electricity moving through conductors. Conductors are the elements and things that electricity can move through! We will also be using home-made play-dough to help us with this experiment!  

Come join us for a fun week of zapping-cool STEM activities! Hope to see you there!

STEM is back in the Children's Gallery and we had a very busy first week!

In honor of the holiday, the STEM theme is Independence Day. There were three STEM-based activities: Painting Fireworks, Construct a Monument, and Cracking Jefferson's Code. 

The first activity was Painting Fireworks.
To do this activity, you need:
- Dish soap
- Acrylic paint
- Water
- A blank sheet of paper
First, you blow into the mixture with a straw, creating bubbles! Then, you take a sheet of paper and place it on top of the bubbles. Once you pull the paper away, a design is left on the paper where the bubbles were! This is a super fun and creative activity! (As well as a little messy!)

The second activity was Construct a Monument. We used mini marshmallows and toothpicks to design our own monuments! This enjoyable activity lets you work with different materials to construct something extraordinary. It's simple and fun to do!​

I hope you were able to join us for Elmer's Special Day by David McKee. This is such a fun book to read and look at! It was very nice of Elmer to invite the other animals to join the Elephant Parade. It helped all of the animals become friends with each other! Elmer showed us that a great way to make new friends is to ask others to play with you.