Five Missions, Creating Colors Part 4
Hello everyone!
Every week, NH-DI is going to publish a newsletter for families, which we hope will be full of educational resources and inspiration during this challenging time.
We will feature a hands-on educational activity, which will be developed by our volunteers. We hope these will vary quite a bit from week to week, but they might take the form of an instant challenge, a mini-lesson, an experiment, an art project, or a game.
Additionally, we will collect and share other online resources that have inspired us! Each week, we’ll curate a list of cool activities, performances, and more.
Here’s where you can find previous issues:
- April 27, 2020: Masks, Creating Colors (part 3), StoryCorps, National Geographic, California Academy of Sciences, TeachRock, MoMA, Toilet Paper Rolls, Magic Milk, Juice Box Balloon Car, Bouncy Ball, Art with Shadows, Scavenger Hunt, Virtual IC: Keep My Boat Afloat
- April 20, 2020: Creating Colors (part 2), Secret Codes (episode 2), Rube Goldberg of Soap, Getty Artworks Recreated, Camp Hello Bello, Elephant Toothpaste, Paper Horses That Walk, Cloud in a Jar, Stop Motion Video, 826 Digital, How Stuff Works, Instructables
You’ll find links to additional issues at the bottom of the Weekly Roundup main page.
Your mission this week, should you choose to accept it…
- Mission 1: Using newspaper as the main material (is this an anachronism?), make a doghouse. Extra credit if you can photograph your dog in this new abode! (If you don’t have newspaper at home, use a different type of paper! If you don’t have a dog, photograph a different pet, or a stuffed animal!)
- Mission 2: Create 2 or more monochromatic meals for the menu of a new restaurant called Prism! Each meal should be well balanced and have at least 4 separate dishes.
- Mission 3: Using only recycled materials, make a toy for a baby.
- Mission 4: Tired of your old board games? Make a new COLORFUL board game with a set of rules. Be ready to share your product with your friends (virtually, of course)!
- Mission 5: Masks are everywhere because of COVID-19. Create a prototype (an example) of a protective mask that would be appropriate and fashionable at a high society ball!
If you complete any of these missions (or all five!), we’d love to see what you create. See the “share what you’ve created” section at the end of this week’s Weekly Roundup for the best way to do this! (And special thanks to Jill Schoonmaker for coming up with these missions!)
Creating Colors: Part 4
This multipart workshop, created by NH-DI volunteer Craig Richardson, is all about color!
- How our eyes make it possible for us to see in color
- How new colors can be created by combining light sources, or mixing paints and dyes together
- The different ways in which animals (and some people) see color
In addition to learning lots of fascinating information, we’ve included a fun hands-on activity!
In case you haven’t been following this series, here is where you’ll find Part 1, Part2, and Part 3.
Some websites we recommend:
PBS Southern California: At-Home Learning
They are offering broadcast programming with digital resources that adhere to California’s state curriculum—but it’s online, free, and available to everyone! There are so many fascinating videos along with activities, all of which are organized by age!
6,000 Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized and Free to Read Online
The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries has digitized more than 6,000 historical children’s books. You can view the collection here.
BrainVentures
An initiative of the University of Michigan Center for Digital Curricula, BrainVentures give children choices of learning activities, provide multiple learning modalities, engage children in constructing animations, videos, photo albums, stories and in exploring field trips, games and simulations. From music to math, from science to the arts, BrainVentures light a child’s imagination and increase a child’s understanding of the world. And they’re free!
Girls Who Code
Girls Who Code is releasing activities weekly — some online, some offline, of varying levels of difficulty. Each activity includes a feature of a woman in tech who pioneered innovative technology. They are making these activities free to anyone who wants to access them. Learn how to plan and program a digital story with Scratch, learn how to use JavaScript to create a virtual hike, and explore basic computer science concepts in Python while learning how to help your community by creating a chatbot, or an automated help system!
Some more STEAM activities to try:
Make your own lava lamp
How to make a wax resist
Light refraction experiment
Bounce an egg
Some activities created by DI headquarters
Shape Up (And Out) Instant Challenge
Build a freestanding structure as tall and as wide as possible in one of the following shapes: square, cylinder, hexagon, or star.
Virtual Instant Challenge: Crack The Code
For this Instant Challenge, you’ll need to use a specific set of materials to complete as many words as possible for friends, family or team members to decipher. As always, you may modify the materials based on what you have on hand!
Share what you’ve created!
Were you inspired by any of the activities or resources in this Weekly 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 Weekly 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 Weekly Roundup page.
That’s all for this week, but we look forward to sending you more soon! And as always, if you have ideas for the Weekly Roundup, email Emily Richardson at emily.richardson@nh-di.org.
Published weekly 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…