Calendar of Events April 12 – 22

Mixing in Math, April 12 & 17

Celebrate National Robotics Week with Robots and Brain Bots, Inc.!

April 12

Good Vibrations: Musical Instrument Exploration with Olin College, April 14

Write Your Own iPhone/iPad App! April 15

Spring Tree Walk, April 17

SMART Gals: Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers,

April 18

Suncatchers, April 19

Engineers’ Exchange with the Acton-Boxborough Robotics Team, April 19

Capillary-Action Butterflies, April 20

Music and Movement with Miss Carolyn, April 21

Tree Rubbings, April 22

 

Patriot’s Day/Public School Vacation Week

Both Museums OPEN 9 AM – 4:30 PM Monday, April 16 – Friday, April 20

 

All programs are free with admission except when noted otherwise.

 

Mixing in Math: Pictures on a Page

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Practice your counting skills as we read Eric Carle’s The Hungry Caterpillar and then create a collage using pictures of the objects you counted in the story. © 2008 TERC.

Thursday’s Tales

11 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Join us for our weekly story time. We’ll bring the books; you bring your imagination!

Celebrate National Robotics Week with Robots and Brain Bots, Inc.!

Drop-in 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Science Discovery Museum
Meet Robots and Brain Bots Inc., the high school robotics team from Gann Academy in Waltham, winners of the 2011 FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship Inspire Award. The team will demonstrate their robot that flips crates, loads racquetballs, and lifts the crates in the air using a scissor lift. The Inspire Award is the most prestigious award given to a team that competes well on the field, has an innovative robot design, documents well in the engineering notebook, and does extensive community outreach.

FETCH!™ Rescue Mission

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Listen to Eric Carle’s 10 Little Rubber Ducks and then design a hook to rescue the rubber ducks that have gone adrift. A preschool-level adaptation of this popular FETCH!™ activity. Sponsored by Middlesex Savings Bank, with additional support from Red Hat, Inc. © 2011 WGBH Educational Foundation.

FETCH!™ What’s the Buzz?

Drop-in 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

What’s the Buzz? Make your own kazoo and try it out in our SoundLab exhibit! Sponsored by Middlesex Savings Bank, with additional support from Red Hat, Inc. © 2011 WGBH Educational Foundation.

 

Build It!

All Day Children’s Discovery Museum

LEGO building for toddlers! Bring your imagination to build, stack, and sort using our enormous collection of DUPLOS. Construct your own architectural wonder or work together to build a museum-community sculpture.

Good Vibrations: Musical Instrument Exploration with Olin College 

Drop-in 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

Experiment with vibration, waves, and frequencies to learn how musical instruments generate an amazing range of sounds. The dynamic Olin College Engineering Discovery Team will lead this energetic music workshop!

 

Face Painting

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Use your face or hand as a canvas for a colorful spring-inspired painting.

Write Your Own iPhone/iPad App!

Pre-registration workshop: 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

Would you or your child like to learn how to write a cool game or application for the iPhone or iPad? Learn the basics of iOS programming from a local 12-year-old who taught himself and has a published app in the App Store used by thousands of students, teachers and educators around the world!  This workshop will provide a good overview of iOS programming and will walk you through the steps involved in writing and publishing a simple app.  Ages 10+.

 

Fee: $5 per person, a maximum of 2 children must be accompanied by an adult (this is not a drop-off program). Pre-registration and payment required by April 12^th; please register and pay online at http://tinyurl.com/iOS-programming. Registration will close automatically once maximum capacity is reached; please email tdicureia@discoverymuseums.org if you are interested to be placed on a waitlist for a second class at 3pm on the same date.

 

Dinosaur Discoveries

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Join the paleontology dig in our giant outdoor sandbox filled with sand, tools, and dinosaurs.

 

Mixing in Math: Treasure Hunt

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Practice you’re directional skills as you use movement shapes to guide your family to the location of the buried treasure: our giant sandbox filled with gold coins. © 2008 TERC.

Spring Tree Walk

1 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

Spring brings buds and new leaves to all plants including trees. Find out about these massive plants on a walk around the grounds with beloved science teacher Frank Meehan. See the variation in bud shapes, sizes, and colors, and learn how to identify trees in your own backyard. Rain or shine; dress appropriately. Note: the walk is not handicap accessible.

 

Messy Masterpiece: Nature’s Paintbrush

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Use a flower as a paintbrush to create a unique work of art.

SMART Gals: Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers

Pre-registration class

1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

In this Lexicon Villages event, children and parents work together through a series of interactive stations representing math and language concepts from this award-winning book that combines learning and adventure.  Feed synonyms to a thesaurus, create sentences out of flower petals, discover pi, measure the museum in paces, make up your own words using Greek and Latin roots, try your hand at puzzling Tangrams, do a maze in a mirror, and more!

Meet the book’s author and get a sneak peak of the second book in the series, The Ice Castle, coming to stores August 2012, and leave with an autographed copy of Lost in Lexicon and a packet of even more activities to try at home. The SMART (Science-Math-Art) Gals Series is sponsored by The Ramsey McCluskey Family Foundation.

Instructor: Penny Noyce

Ages:   8 to 12

Fee:    $10 for members; $12 for non-members

Pre-registration required by April 16; please register and pay online at http://tinyurl.com/LexiconVillages-April2012.

 

Suncatchers

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Collect an assortment of natural materials from the Museum grounds to create a dazzling collage to hang in a window at your home.

FETCH!™ Rescue Mission

Drop-in 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

Can you meet Ruff Ruffman’s challenge? Design hooks that can grab different capsules out of the water. Sponsored by Middlesex Savings Bank, with additional support from Red Hat, Inc. © 2011 WGBH Educational Foundation.

Engineers’ Exchange with the Acton-Boxborough Robotics Team

Drop-in 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Science Discovery Museum
Meet a FIRST Tech Challenge robot and its designers from the Acton-Boxborough Robotics Team. Watch the robot maneuver, learn about the design process and competition, and participate in an engineering activity.

 

Capillary-Action Butterflies

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Beautiful butterflies made by you! Decorate your butterfly’s wings, add water, and watch as the water mixes the colors (using capillary action) creating your own specially designed butterfly.

 

Music and Movement with Miss Carolyn

1 p.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Explore sound through singing and playing. Move, make music, listen, learn, and get a multi-sensory workout! Music improves your child’s memory, cognitive development, learning skills, and ability to express emotion. Plus, it’s fun! Miss Carolyn is a professional musician, serves as a faculty member at Indian Hill Music School, and has been a licensed Kindermusik Educator for 5+ years.

 

Tree Rubbings

10 a.m. Children’s Discovery Museum

Explore the variety of trees in a section of woods adjacent to the Museum perfectly sized for young children. Use your fingers to feel the different textures of tree bark and create rubbings to capture the differences on paper.

FETCH!™ Toy Chemistry

Drop-in 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Science Discovery Museum

Stretchy and slimy toys are the best says Ruff Ruffman! See and feel everyday materials change as you combine them to create polymers! Sponsored by Middlesex Savings Bank, with additional support from Red Hat, Inc. © 2011 WGBH Educational Foundation.

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About The Discovery Museums

The Discovery Museums are the children’s and science museums of Metrowest Boston, paired on a single campus in Acton, MA.  The Museums—the Science Discovery Museum and the Children’s Discovery Museum—serve families and schools from towns throughout the region, with a commitment to informal education that enhances classroom learning.  The hands-on, playful exhibits, developed by professional educators, inspire curiosity, exploration, experimentation and imagination.  The Discovery Museums combine manageable scale, convenient location and free parking to provide a fun and engaging experience where children and adults can discover their world together.

Hours and Admission

The Discovery Museums are located at 177 Main Street Acton, MA 01720. Tel 978-264-4200. All programs are free with admission: $11.00 adults & children, $10.00 seniors 60+, free for children under 1 and Members. Teachers are always free.

School Year hours

Children’s Discovery Museum: 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tues – Sun

Science Discovery Museum: 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tues – Fri, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat & Sun

Both Museums closed on Mondays.

 

For more information, please visit www.discoverymuseums.org.