For New Hampshire’s April school vacation week, when none of us is actually going anywhere, we decided to focus on things we could do if we did have some sort of wild vacation adventure and ended up on a deserted island- how could we problem-solve our way through being stranded and get back home again?

We’ll start by making a compass from materials we (hopefully) have lying around so that we can find north and the other cardinal directions- this is a pretty quick activity that touches on our magnetic field and the Earth’s core.

Tangrams are a geometric puzzle that have been entertaining people for centuries. A set of tangrams is comprised of seven shapes: 2 large right triangles, 1 medium right triangle, 2 small right triangles, a square, and a parallelogram. In a tangram puzzle, you want to use all 7 shapes to form the given picture. This can be tricky since there are billions of ways to arrange the shapes, but you’re trying to find the one that makes the right shape.

As you work with tangrams, you’re growing in your analytical skills, your spatial awareness, and your understanding in how shapes can be manipulated. Let’s make our own set of tangrams and working on our problem solving abilities!

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our very first Facebook Live event, in celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30th birthday! Faithe and Sarah had a blast presenting on live video feed about the history and significance of the Hubble Space Telescope. (Hubble launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.)

In this post, we share additional Hubble resources, to keep the learning coming all weekend. In particular, there are plenty of opportunities to dive deeper into the Cosmic Reef—which we are able to visit via the special Hubble image “Tapestry of Blazing Starbirth” that was publicly revealed for the first time on April 24, 2020.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope! Click here to see a never-before-seen Hubble image, which NASA released for public view just this morning, 4/24/20. This post also includes details about our very first Facebook Live event, scheduled for this afternoon, in honor of this milestone. Join us in celebrating #Hubble30!

Reduce REUSE Recycle!

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, this project will practice reusing! The DIY activity uses old egg cartons and repurposes them in a fun and interactive way. Use your paper creation and decorate it however you like. There is no limits to your creativity with this project! Follow the steps below to create your own paper from home. (This project takes a little over a day to do because the paper needs to dry.)

Join one of our educators as she reads Iceberg of Antarctica by Marlo Garnsworthy. This is a story in two parts: the first part, about the lifespan of an iceberg, may be enough for some viewers—or stay for the “fine print” finale, with details on the JOIDES scientific coring expedition!

Learning about and increasing awareness of endangered species is one of the easiest ways to help. Let’s bring some endangered species to the front of our minds by making our own game of “Guess Who.”

With food waste awareness becoming more widespread, people are trying to reduce their waste at home. One way to reduce food waste (and provide some other benefits, like cleaning the air in your home and, according to some studies, boosting your mood and your productivity) is using kitchen scraps to grow houseplants!

Use modeling clay to create a simple model of the Earth’s layered structure!

Enjoy these free downloadable activities…Reduce paper waste by using double-sided printing, or printing your activity on the back of a used page!

A terrarium is an enclosed environment created for plants, which needs very little outside intervention once it is set up. In celebration of Earth Day, let’s create a basic terrarium from an upcycled 2-liter plastic bottle. When it is complete, our plant will receive sunlight through the transparent walls of the bottle, and it will obtain water from its own water cycle!

Upcycle leftover packaging to create this cute all-ages cloud mobile!

Since 1970, communities and activists have celebrated Earth Day on April 22. On this day, people all over the world show their support for environmental protection, advocating and working to make our planet a cleaner and healthier place for all of us. This year, for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the theme is climate change.

The Earth Day Network offers many opportunities the join and follow the global movement for environmentalism. For something closer to home, the Discovery Center will be posting crafts, resources, activities throughout the day, with the aim of learning about—and appreciating the beauty in—our very own home planet. We hope you’ll celebrate with us!

Have you ever turned the music up so loud that you can feel it? The floor seems to hum, and you can feel the vibrations in the walls and other objects in the room. How can music travel from a speakers and cause such powerful vibrations in other objects? In this activity you will make a model of your eardrum, and watch how sounds can make it vibrate! You will explore how sound creates vibrations and how that will affect small objects, from as little as a humming sound, to as loud of playing music through a speaker.

As we move into warmer and sunnier spring days, outdoor activities in our yards and driveways become an option while we are all social distancing. One classic outside activity is drawing with sidewalk chalk. Playing with chalk is a great way to get creative, and we can add an extra educational element by creating out own chalk paint! With younger learners, you can use the process of making the paint to explore color mixing, division, and ratios.

Blowing bubbles is a fun and simple activity for all ages. You dip a wand in bubble solution, blow through it, and create little spheres of soapy water. But have you ever thought about why bubbles are spherical?

Let’s explore the science and math behind bubbles!

Learn how different colors interact with heat in this simple solar-powered activity!

This activity is geared toward elementary-level learners, but can easily scale up or down depending on existing science knowledge. Younger children may appreciate performing the experiment with less emphasis on the background and concluding information, while older students may choose to supplement this lesson with in-depth research on wavelengths and energy.