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Gingerbread Houses: A great family activity for the holiday season

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One of our favorite family workshops here at the Children’s Museum of NH is making and decorating gingerbread houses. This past weekend, we welcomed 34 families – some with grandparents, cousins and friends – to this annual holiday tradition. Never does our classroom smell so sweet as when filled with the aroma of baked gingerbread. And if you want to see smiles, it is amazing what a table full of colorful decorations and baggies full of icing can do.

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Although you will have to wait until 2013 to make a gingerbread house with us, here are our top five tips for creating a similar fun experience at home:

1.  It doesn’t have to be as complicated as building a full-sized gingerbread house. For younger children, you can start simple with constructing small houses, or anything else their imaginations come up with using graham crackers. Another great no-bake idea – decorate ice cream sugar cones to make a forest full of trees!

Image2.  If you are using candy decorations, expect that kids will want to eat them while they decorate. Serve a healthy snack of cut fruit or veggies with dip before you even think of taking out the candy. Even serving a small portion of a sweet treat while they are decorating, such as our choice of a simple sugar cookie and apple cider, keeps the desire to munch on candy at bay.

Image3.  Think outside of the box when choosing decorations. Many cereals that you might already have on hand have interesting colors, textures and shapes. Waffle pretzels can make interesting windows and doors. Dried fruit, shredded coconut and snack treats you already have at home can all make great decorations without breaking the bank.

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4.  Icing matters, especially when building 3-D objects like houses. Regular frosting that you purchase or make does not stiffen fast enough or get hard enough to glue your creations together. Our favorite recipe that has the added benefit of drying like concrete is:  2 pounds of confectioner’s sugar, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar and 6 egg whites. Mix all ingredients with an electric mixer for 5 – 7 minutes until stiff peaks form. Instead of buying expensive pastry bags, a plastic sandwich bag with the corner snipped works well to spread your frosting.

Ginger2012_Family115.  It’s all about having fun together! Will your children care about creating a symmetrical design or have the willpower to resist the urge to taste while they create? Probably not. Will it be messy? Certainly yes, but once dry the icing is easy to sweep or wipe up.

We hope you’ve been inspired by these tips and photos from our recent Gingerbread Workshop to try this project at home. Happy Holidays!

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Meet the CMNH Experience Guides: Sarah

It’s time to meet another member of the Experience Guide Staff at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire!

Sarah is at CMNH the majority of the week and can usually be found hip deep in arts and crafts supplies in the Muse Studio.  You may have even heard Sarah’s voice while you were shopping for a pair of jeans.  Yes, you read that right!  Sarah has a lot to say so let’s jump right in and find out more!

Sarah welcomes you to the Muse Studio!

Zach:  Sarah, how long have you worked at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire?

Sarah:  I’ve been at the museum since October – so about 11 months!

Z:  Why CMNH?

S:  I’ve always loved working with kids and when I saw that CMNH was hiring I thought it would be a great opportunity to do different activities and exploration with families each day.  I loved that each day would be a new and different experience!  The other part of that daily surprise is the fact that I get to teach each day.  Interactive teaching with the visitors is the highlight of my job.

Z:  What originally brought you to New Hampshire?

S:  I came to Dover because I was accepted in to the Masters of Fine Arts program at UNH in Durham.  My focus is Creative Writing – specifically Poetry.

Z:  Where did you complete your undergrad studies?

S:  I attended Columbia University in New York City.  My focus in undergrad was Creative Writing but I also spent much of my time at Columbia attending and participating in musical performances.  I’ve been studying voice since I was six-years old so I definitely enjoyed working with classical music and opera at Columbia.

Z:  Wow!  You may likely be our only Experience Guide with an opera background!  Tell me, what – if any – experience did you have working with families before your time here at CMNH?

S:  For many, many years, I taught at a musical theater summer camp in my hometown of Allentown, New Jersey.

The Charm of the Highway StripThis Way to Allentown!

Z:  That sounds like a lot of fun!

S:  Yes!  “Musical Theater Magical Camp” was a very enjoyable place to work!

Z:  Wow!  With a name like that it sounds even more fun!

S:  It really was a lot of fun.  Each session ran for 3 weeks and was open to children from 5-12 years old.  We would spend Week One getting to know each other, learning about theater, playing games and becoming comfortable with being on stage.  We would cast a full musical in Week Two and then teach them choreography, design and make the costumes, and create the set.  Then, after rehearsing throughout Week Three, we would put on a performance on the last day for the entire camp and all of the returning families.

Avast ye, matey!Curtains up on the, “Pirates: The Musical” set, circa 2009

Z:  Did any of the children ever experience stage fright?

S:  Oh, yes!  We would often get parents who would sign their children up for our camp in an attempt to kind of bring them out of their shell.  These are the children that would be quite shy at the start of camp; often they would be the younger campers.  Which made it such a wonderful process that at the end of three weeks we’d be able to see these kids that had entered the process unsure of themselves and their abilities come out on stage and blow us away with their confidence!

Z:  I’m currently working on a production myself this summer outside of CMNH and I’m having some trouble with a few of the actors hitting their spots and remembering their lines.  Can I recruit you to come and fill them full of your trademark confidence??

S:  Well, I’m pretty busy at the museum this summer but we’ll see what I can do!

Z:  Sarah, switching gears a bit, I’d like to know if you or your family visited museums when you were growing up?

S:  We did.  We went to a ton of museums as a family.  My father is a software developer and he has worked on a number of projects and exhibits for museums.  He and his brothers did most of hardware and software for the Sony Wonder Museum in New York when it first opened.

Z:  “New York” meaning New York City?

S:  Yes!  Right on Madison Avenue!  I was able to explore the museum before they officially opened to the public while my father worked on different projects and exhibits.

Z:  How old were you?

S:  About 6 or 7.

Z:  I’m jealous.

S:  [Laughs.]  You should be!  My dad has worked with a number of museums since then and I actually got to do some voice-over work on one of his projects.

Z:  I’m somehow even more jealous now.  What was the voice work?

S:  It was an exhibit for the Children’s Museum of Houston that was also getting installed at the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.  It was a Magic School Bus weather-based exhibit.  I provided the voices for two of the children in the Magic School Bus.

Magic School BusAll Aboard the Magic School Bus!

Z:  Wow!

S:  He also worked for the Levi’s flagship store in Union Square in San Francisco – so for a long time, I was the voice of many of their in-store kiosks.

Z:  Did you actually get to travel to San Francisco?

Sarah = Kiosk Voice!Sarah’s voice will help you buy your next pair of jeans!

S:  I did!  The whole family spent the summer in San Francisco.

Z:  And how old were you then?

S:  I was 12 years old and it was wonderful to be there for the whole summer.  We really got to know the city.

Z:  I have to ask – did you visit any museums?

S:  We did.  We went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  It . . . well . . .

Z:  Yes?

S:  It was actually . . . an interesting experience.

Z:  I’m going to need you to tell me more than that!

S:  Yes.  Well.  They had a number of installations that were very advanced and were . . . well, perhaps a little over my 12-year old head.

Z:  I see.  Well, Sarah, please tell us:  What is your favorite museum in the world?

S:  That’s a really tough question to answer.  I very much love the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  I visited it constantly while at Columbia.  But . . . I’d have to say that the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ will always hold a special place in my heart.  When my father was working on the Magic School Bus exhibit, my friend and I were allowed to be at the museum before and after hours and we were given free access to all of the IMAX shows.  Most importantly, we were allowed to wear V.I.P. necklaces. [Laughs.]

Z:  I always knew you were a V.I.P.!  Sarah, what is your favorite exhibit at CMNH and why?

S:  My favorite exhibit is probably the Muse Studio.  I love the way we’ve been able to mix artistic creativity with scientific exploration.  You’ll see families and staff drawing, painting and collaging conjoined with learning how a prism works and how a lima bean plant grows.  It’s definitely the part of the museum that, as a child, you would have had difficulty getting me to leave.

Z:  Even as an adult we have a hard time getting you out of the Muse Studio!

S:  This is true.  [Laughs.]

Essential Information about Experience Guide Sarah

Favorite Color:  Green (Most shades of green, but not Turquoise!)

Favorite Animal:  Dachshund

Favorite Movie:  Contact

Favorite Type of Music:  Classical  /  Favorite Artist:  Elvis Costello

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Meet the CMNH Experience Guides: Erika

Welcome to a new series on our blog that helps YOU – our readers & visitors – get to know our Museum Experience Guides!

Erika can be found at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire most weekdays and is always ready to greet families with a smile! You might recognize Erika even if you’ve never been to CMNH! How’s that? Well . . . maybe we should let Erika explain:

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Zach:  Erika, how long have you worked at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire?

Erika:  Just over a year and a half.

Z:  When you first came to CMNH, you were . . .

E:  . . . an intern! Yes. I interned here for a short while and then . . .

Z:  . . . and then you became an employee?

E:  Yes!  Then I became an Experience Guide at CMNH!

Z:  Tell me – why CMNH?

E:  I love museums. ALL museums! I live here in Dover and I love working with children and families. I found out about CMNH and I really wanted to become a part of such a wonderful place.

Z:  I must mention this because I’m not sure how many in the museum field can claim this, but you don’t just work at one museum. You don’t just work at two museums.  You actually work at three different museums! That must be quite a whirlwind!

E:  It certainly can be. I’m constantly going from museum to museum. I work the majority of my time here at CMNH, but I also work at the Seacoast Science Center in Rye and the SEE Science Center in Manchester as well.

Z:  My goodness!  That’s a lot of work!  Do visitors ever get confused when they see you at more than one museum?

E:  That’s actually happened a few times. I’ll be at CMNH all day on a Friday and then at the SEE Science Center on a Saturday and visitor’s will look and me and then do a double take and seem confused until it dawns on them where else they’ve seen me.

Z:  Now, sadly, after more than a year and a half with us at CMNH, you’ll be leaving us later this summer. You’ll be attending George Washington University.

E:  Yes, I will. I’m extremely excited.

Z:  This will be to obtain your Master’s Degree. What will your degree be in?

E:  Museum Education.

Z:  Museum Education?! I would think that you would already have plenty of museum education working for so many museums!

E:  (laughing) You would think!

Z:  But one can always learn more!

E:  Exactly! And I certainly plan to!

Z:  Erika, you grew up here in New Hampshire, correct?

KPFThe Annual Pumpkin Festival in Keene, NH

E:  I did, yes. I grew up in Keene, NH.

Z:  Did you visit museums as a child?

E:  I did. There was a small Children’s Museum in Keene that’s no longer there. We used to visit that museum A LOT. I loved it.

Z:  Did you visit other museums?

E:  Oh, yes. We would visit both the Museum of Science and the Boston Children’s Museum in Massachusetts. We’d also visit the Seacoast Science Center in Rye.

Z:  Did you ever visit this museum when we were located in Portsmouth?

CMOPThe Children’s Museum of Portsmouth, 1983-2008

E:  I did, but I was so little that I don’t have very clear memories of the experience.

Z:  That’s ok. We won’t hold it against you. Erika – tell us – what’s your favorite museum outside of the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire?

E:  My favorite museum is actually an aquarium. I consider aquariums a type of museum . . .

Z:  (faux-sternly) Hmmmm . . . we’ll allow it. Proceed.

E:  The aquarium is L’Oceanografic in Valencia, Spain. It acts as a science museum as well, so you can definitely allow it. (laughs)

Z:  So why were you so taken with L’Oceanografic?

E:  For several reasons. Apart from the exhibits, one thing I was immediately taken with was the entire set-up of L’Oceanografic. It’s the biggest aquarium in all of Europe and it’s made up of about a dozen zones with each one devoted to a different body or water or type of aquatic ecosystem. One building might showcase the Mediterranean Sea while another building is devoted to the Arctic. There are also underwater walking tunnels and sections of the facility that contained small bubbles that the visitor could stick their head into and suddenly be surrounded by fish on all sides. You felt like you were in the water with the fish. It’s an amazing sensation.

L’Oceanografic Underwater Tunnel

Z:  Wow!  I really want to visit L’Oceanografic now.

E:  And I haven’t even told you about the glow-in-the-dark octopuses yet!

Z:  Oh, man. Something tells me CMNH doesn’t have room for glow-in-the-dark octopuses. Erika, could you share with us what your favorite CMNH exhibit is? And why?

E:  My favorite exhibit, no question, is Dino Detective. I love – LOVE – anything to do with dinosaurs! I also love that exhibit because it’s one of the easiest exhibits to get down to our young visitor’s level and interact and explore with them while they learn about and dig for dinosaurs. I also enjoy teaching visitors about fossils and evolution.

Z:  Well, Erika, we hope that you’ll still come back in the future and visit CMNH  after you’ve moved to Washington D.C. and check in with the visitors and staff!

E:  Of course! I’ll always love CMNH!

Essential Information about Experience Guide Erika
 
Favorite Color:  Blue
Favorite Animal:  (Tie) Three-Toed Sloth / Hedgehog
Favorite Movie:  Cinderella
Favorite Type of Music:  A cappella

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Anyone Can Grow Food!

Growing your own fruits and vegetables means that you know exactly what goes into your food and exactly where it comes from. This offers peace of mind to families who are concerned about feeding pesticides and genetically modified foods to their children. Not only that, having a home garden promotes good nutrition and gives families an activity that they can take part in and enjoy together.

Families are also motivated to grow their own food to stretch their food budgets. According to the US Department of Agriculture, for every $1 spent on seeds and fertilizer, home gardeners can grow an average of $25 worth of produce! That can be a significant saving for families and a great rationale for getting started.

Wanting to inspire as many growers as possible, we’ve constructed our own fruit and vegetable gardens along the river behind the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. We are partnering with Master Gardener Leslie Stevens to offer a FREE six-part series covering everything from seed starting and building your own raised beds, to composting and maintaining your own home gardens. Three raised beds will produce food for our visitors to help monitor, maintain, and watch flourish, all while learning the ins and outs of gardening.

The children who participated in our most recent session enthusiastically planted snap peas and potatoes. During the next session, we will be adding tomatoes and strawberries to our outdoor beds. Future sessions will cover helping plants grow and how to harvest fresh produce when it is ripe.

Families are invited to stop by the Museum’s front desk and find out how to can join our Growing Gardeners Club at any time this summer. We hope families will be inspired to see what can blossom in their own home garden.

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What happens if … ?

We go through a lot of baking soda and vinegar in my house. We’re not cooking with it. We’re not cleaning with it. We’re mixing “potions” with it, erupting volcanoes, mixing it with food coloring and painting with it. Splashing salt on top to see what happens. Raiding the recycling bin and building courses for the bubbly liquid to travel down. (I highly recommend building such courses in a bathtub or on an outside deck!)

Although I’ve been an educator both in schools and the Museum for nearly 20 years, I’ve received some great insights into the way kids learn about the world observing my own kids try to figure out “what happens if” and “how does this work.”

The author's son in a previous winter when snow was abundant!

This past weekend, my 9-year-old son was lamenting the pitiful ½ inch of snow on the small hill he likes to sled on in the yard. “That’s a problem,” I said. “Can you think of a solution?” After trying to relocate snow from other parts of the yard to no avail, he asked for a bucket. His solution: to pour bucket-loads of water down a path on the hill. How long will this take to freeze? How many layers of ice do I need to put on the hill to make it thick enough to hold the weight of me and my sled without cracking? Does the water freeze faster if I put cold water in my bucket?

My son was playing, getting messy and having fun, but most of all he was determined to have a place to sled by the end of the day (which was how long it took for the multiple layers of ice to freeze). Did he realize that he was conducting experiments? Forming hypotheses? Using scientific reasoning? No, but that’s okay.

Here at the Museum, we may not have the icy hill in the backyard, but we know we’ve done our job when we observe kids (and adults) engaged in asking questions, experimenting, or creating something new together. Are you looking for some “what-happens-if” fun during the cold winter months? We’d love to have you visit and experiment with us.

And check out these websites for some science inspiration you can try at home – recommended by Museum colleagues through the Association of Science and Technology Centers:

“The SciGirls website, http://pbskids.org/scigirls/, is awesome! It’s great for girls and boys.”

www.edheads.com is a great website that has some really fun kid-friendly interactives with accompanying teacher guide (including virtual surgeries, crime scene investigations and nanoparticle development.”

“Carnegie Science Center has a website as part of our girls program at www.braincake.org.”

Activities for school, home or group projects on a variety of science topics: http://www.kids-science-experiments.com/

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Our Evolving Kid’s World Cafe

The idea for the first Kid’s Café came about in 1995 at the Children’s Museum in Portsmouth in a tiny alcove under the stairs. What began as a simple table-top kit with food items to sort utilizing the food pyramid quickly turned into a full-blown exhibit highlighting other cultures from around the world.

I remember, as a floor staff member, watching the children play with the food and having them request more items to role-play with. We quickly added plates, napkins and utensils and watched a whole new exhibit come to life.

With the increasing popularity of the mini Café and a desire to bring more cultural activities to our space, the Café soon moved to the 3rd floor of the Portsmouth museum and became a more substantial exhibit called the Kid’s World Café. There we offered food from Japan, Canada, Germany, Turkey and Mexico.

When the Museum relocated to Dover, as an exhibit team, we knew that we wanted to bring the idea of the Kid’s World Café with us. With increasing emphasis on global societies and understanding and appreciating world cultures, our exhibit team created an area called One World that encompassed several exhibits, including the Kid’s World Café. One World includes interactive components that offer educational opportunities for families to learn about masks, clothing, footwear and food from seven cultures of the world. In the summer of 2008, we opened the new museum and the Kid’s World Café introduced visitors to the Greek culture.

In September of 2011, wanting to bring updated changes to this popular exhibit, the Kid’s World Cafe changed cultures from Greece to Mexico!

As an exhibit developer and museum educator I am often perplexed and surprised by what makes an exhibit so enticing to our young visitors. After creating exhibits for over 20 years, I have learned that using familiar components and every day objects, in this case items found in a kitchen or restaurant, offers children the opportunity to role play in a setting where they know what is expected of them. Children are often more open to learning about a new topics when they can draw upon prior knowledge and familiar topics to do so.

With the change of a new culture this year, brought new additions to the space. An interactive “Innovation Station” sharing board which offers visitors an opportunity to share recipes and traditions from their cultures with other museum visitors. The sharing board has recipes to take and enjoy making at home, and also invites families to leave their own favorite traditions for others to try.

So far, we have had visitors leave several family favorite recipes including “The Best Guacamole” and “Quiche in a Cup” that we will begin adding to our website for visitors to download and make at home.

The Kid’s World Café exhibit encourages children to use their imagination while interacting with other children and adults in that space. Learning and sharing information together is a winning combination and one we encourage throughout the museum. It is our hope that by experiencing and learning about other cultures, children will have a better understanding and appreciation of different cultures around the world.

You can’t go past the Kid’s World Cafe without hearing “Would you like extra cheese with your taco?” or even hearing specific words from the Mexican menu like “Guacamole” “Agua” or “Burritos”.  The museum’s exhibit team plans on changing cultures in the Café every few years so be on the look out to experience a new culture in the coming years. Until then … Bienvenidos a Cafeteria de Ninos!

Care to share?

If you’d like to download our young friend Kimberly’s recipe for Tostadas (she’s the girl shown here making tortillas with her abuela from Mexico), click here. And if you have a Mexican recipe that your family enjoys, please feel free to share it here in the Comments section! We are always looking for new recipes to share with our members and friends.

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Embracing Change

Change. One word that means so much. Seasons change. Our children’s needs and interests change as they grow. As your family changes the experiences you seek to do together change as well. Here at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire, changes are underway – changes designed to keep pace with the needs of the curious children and engaged adults who walk through our doors.

For us, change can take many forms and has many dimensions:

To Deepen Impact

Many of our exhibits can be used in different ways with some changes to supplies. For instance, have you ever wondered what it would be like to make and launch folded paper constructions in Build It Fly It? Simply using folded paper or recycled materials rather than foam shapes opens up new ways to think about the exhibit, its uses and possible outcomes. What flying contraptions have you always wanted to try in that space?

To Support Repeat Visitation

You might be one of the many families who visit the museum 4 – 9 times each year. Change offers new options for you to explore during a visit so the Museum remains challenging, engaging and fresh. New materials, exhibit props, staff-facilitated programs and take-home activities are designed to allow you to make new connections between what you already know – and new ideas.

So, for example, did you know you can build and decorate your own soapbox kit cars in to race in the Thinkering Lab? Buy two from the museum shop, borrow our kit of wood files and decorations, or take them home to make, then bring them back and race head-to-head. We purposely designed this space so that the make-your-own cars we have in the exhibit are just a launching pad for your imagination and the opportunities are endless. In the future, look for other car-building materials, like Legos or recycled materials.

To Stay Relevant and Meaningful

Flexible change, such as exhibit kits that we can share with interested visitors, allows you to customize your visit. Did you know you can ask our Experience Guide staff to bring out a beaver pelt and teeth, or owl pellet dissection activity? Take down more materials in the Studio, or give you a kit of materials to design and construct a different flyer to test in Build It Fly It? We want to be responsive and give you the ability to personalize your visit. After all, we don’t know what your interests are unless you share them with us!

To Support a Broad and Diverse Audience

From crawling infants, to inquisitive 4th graders, from new parents to grandparents, from the casual museum-goer to the Museum member who visits us every week, change helps us reach every visitor in a new way. The Studio’s monthly theme and changing weekly activities are designed to support a variety of learning styles and a broader age range. Our goal for this space is for the youngest visitors and those with the most skill and longest attention spans to both find something interesting to do, and be successful. We are challenging ourselves to come up with projects that meet all our goals and which you find fun.

To Build Relationships

When we choose the theme of an exhibit, we think about how it will allow us to connect and collaborate with, local audiences. From the Trout in the Classroom project to recipe-sharing in the World Café we look for local relevance, a NH focus, a good visitor experience, and opportunities to build relationships. Another way we do this is by incorporating visitor-made work in the Museum, and including your faces and voices within the Museum. This allows the Museum to truly reflect you – our users – and it keeps the experience fresh for all. We think your work, images, and words are beautiful and inspiring and we are glad for the chance to celebrate the creativity in action here everyday.

What do you think? As you visit the museum over the next year, keep a look out for ongoing change at many levels. Do you see different elements and props in our exhibits? Did everyone in the family find something to do the month in the Studio? Did our Experience Guide staff share something new with you or invite you to try a special activity? Do you see comments, artwork and perspectives of our community?

We truly want to know what works and what still needs work. What do you want us to try next?

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