Hello everyone!
This is NH-DI’s tenth straight week of creating and compiling this newsletter! As the school year winds down and we head into summer months, we will continue publishing The Roundup, but you will find it in your inbox just once a month instead of every single week. We hope it continues to provide you with resources and inspiration.
To view previous issues, head here.
Origami: The Art of Paper Folding
This week, learn how to transform a flat sheet of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting!
Thanks to NH-DI volunteer Craig Richardson for developing this workshop!
Your mission this week, should you choose to accept it…
Mission 1
Your mission is to make dessert! This is a 3 ingredient recipe that makes yummy cookies! (Get adult permission and/or help, if needed!)
What you need:
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 1 egg
- 1 cup sugar
- A baking sheet lined with parchment paper
- A bowl
- An electric mixer
- A tablespoon
- A fork
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350*F and WASH YOUR HANDS!
Step 2: Add all ingredients to the bowl and mix together for 2 minutes (or more) until batter is smooth.
Step 3: Scoop out full tablespoons of batter and with your hands, roll into balls.
Step 4: Set balls about 2” apart on the baking sheet and flatten with the fork.
Step 5: Bake for 10-12 minutes until slightly brown.
Step 6: Remove cookies from the oven, cool for 5 minutes in the pan, and then put on a rack to cool!
Step 7: When cool, IMMEDIATELY taste a cookie to ensure they are dessert worthy!
Mission 2
Your mission is to find all the words that can be made with the letters in SUMMER VACATION! You will need lots of paper and a pencil. And before you say to yourself, “this is easy”…there are over 2500 words that can be made! Good luck!
Mission 3
Your mission is to make a bubble wand for big time summer fun!
Materials:
- 2 wooden dowels (each ½” in diameter and 12” to 15” long)
- 8’ of ½” cotton rope or butcher’s twine
- 2 screw eyes/bolts (that the rope/twine can fit through) or cup hooks that you can close with pliers
- A drill to make holes in one end of each dowel (this is for the eye bolt)
- 2-3 large washers, a bucket
- Lots of bubble solution (recipe follows!)
Step 1: Use the drill (or a helpful adult) to make a hole in one end of each dowel and screw in the eye bolts.
Step 2: Thread a few washers onto the cord. Then, put one end of your cord through each eye bolt and tie them together. You now have a loop with washers on one half of the loop.
Step 3: Fill a bucket with your bubble solution (see recipe below).
Step 4: Hold the dowels by the ends without screw bolts. Allowing the two screw bolt ends to touch, dip them and all the string into the solution.
Step 5: Carefully remove from the solution and spread the dowels apart—opening your loop.
Step 6: Slowly start to walk backwards, or gently move your arms.
These giant bubbles are amazing! If you vary the length of your string, you can make them even BIGGER!
Bubble Solution Recipe: Put all the ingredients into your bucket and stir gently!
- 8 cups of water
- 1 cup Dawn (blue dish soap)
- 1 T baking powder
- 1 T glycerin or ¼ cup corn syrup (this makes the bubbles stronger)
Mission 4
Your mission is to use cards and all the mathematical operations you know to create the number 1-25.
Materials:
- Deck of playing cards with all face cards removed
- Sheet of paper
- A pencil
How to play:
Write the numbers 1-25 down the side of your paper. Deal yourself 3 cards. Each card may only be used only once. Sometimes, you may not be able to use a card or even all three cards depending on what numbers you need to check off. After each turn, discard your 3 cards and draw 3 more. Shuffle and reuse pack as needed.
Example of a turn:
You get an 8, 4 & 7
Option 1: You could check off the numbers 8, 4 and 7 on your sheet
Option 2: You could combine all the cards and do multiple operations:
8 x 7 = 56 and 56/4 = 14 and check off 14
Option 3: You could add up all the cards: 8 + 4 + 7 = 19 and check off 19
Option 4: You could subtract: 8-7 =1 and check off 1 and also check off 4, because you haven’t used it yet.
Get the idea? Hint: Check off the higher numbers as soon as you can!
Variation: Challenge someone to play against with you. Take turns picking the 3 cards and see who gets all 25 numbers checked off their sheet first!
Mission 5
Your mission is to create a container to hold 4 marshmallows!
Materials:
- 25 pieces of raw spaghetti
- 12” masking tape
- Ruler
- Bag of marshmallows
Let the fun begin! Using only the materials given, construct a container that will hold 4 marshmallows. Your container must be at least 3” off the table. The ruler may be used for measuring purposes, but cannot be part of your structure.
Did your container support 4 marshmallows? How many more can it support? Can you make an even better structure to support lots more marshmallows? Get more spaghetti and tape and try again!
Thanks to NH-DI volunteer Jill Schoonmaker for continuing to keep us inspired with these missions!
Some websites we recommend
Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Classroom
A free resource center developed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s education department. The Virtual Classroom combines fun, real-world lessons with Wright’s famed principles of organic architecture and solutions-based design, each STEAM-focused lesson offers students its own variation of hands-on activities that encourage them to think critically and creatively. The six-week series will introduce a new lesson and corresponding video weekly, where one activity builds upon the other to culminate into a final project!
The Henry Ford
The Henry Ford provides unique educational experiences based on authentic objects, stories, and lives from America’s traditions of ingenuity, resourcefulness and innovation. We really love their “What If?” series: What if bicycles held the secret to human flight? What if a potato could change the world of agriculture? We also enjoy their Connect 3 series, in which they select three artifacts from their collection of millions and have experts reveal the surprisingly curious connections between them.
Beam Anywhere Projects
Beam Anywhere Projects are a jumping off point for young people to participate in self-directed learning and making while schools are closed for the COVID-19 crisis. Each project should be doable with a few basic items and a lot of imagination. Anywhere Projects are tailored for elementary, middle, and high school students. All of these projects have the potential to connect with each other to give students a cohesive experience of exploring their environment and making physical objects. From cardboard building blocks to homemade clay to a kaleidoscope phone lens, you’ll want to check this site out!
Some STEAM activities to try
Toontastic 3D
With Toontastic 3D, a free app created by Google, you can draw, animate, and narrate swashbuckling adventures, breaking news stories, science reports, and all your other wacky ideas!
Invented Character Profiles
Create a realistic fictional person and a file of their life, with physical, personality, family, school, and job descriptions, and life artifacts.
Create a Story Box
Gather 5-6 items into a box and then create a story using all of the items in the box.
Electrical Fleas
Start your own electric flea circus. You’re probably familiar with some of the effects of static electricity: it makes sparks when you comb your hair on a cold day, and it makes balloons stick to the wall at a birthday party. In this activity, static electricity makes electric “fleas” jump up and down.
The Many Types of Mucus
Boogers, snot, and loogies—mucus doesn’t usually inspire pleasant thoughts. Even the word “mucus” grosses people out. Despite our unpleasant reactions to this slimy substance, mucus is a superhero in our battle to maintain a healthy internal environment (our microbiome) and to keep our bodies functioning smoothly. You will learn about mighty mucus and use slime as a model to explore some amazing properties of this vital, albeit icky, substance.
Share what you’ve created!
Were you inspired by any of the activities or resources in NH-DI’s Roundup? What did you build or create? We encourage you, with a parent or guardian’s help and permission, to share your creations on our Facebook or Instagram pages! (Just add your photo as a comment on our weekly post!)
And please share NH-DI’s Roundup with your friends! Ask them to sign up for weekly emails (if they’re 13 or older), or send them a link to our main NH-DI Roundup page.
That’s all for this issue, but we look forward to sending you more soon! And as always, if you have ideas for NH-DI’s Roundup, email Emily Richardson at emily.richardson@nh-di.org.
Published by New Hampshire Innovation and Creativity Connection (NHICC), the nonprofit organization that operates New Hampshire’s Destination Imagination, Camp Gottalikachallenge, and Girls Engineering the Future programs. Learn more about us…