Six New Missions, Cracking Secret Codes
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.
To view previous issues, head here.
Your mission this week, should you choose to accept it…
Mission 1: Create your own version of special headwear to remind everyone of the importance of social-distancing. Students in China have returned to school wearing special hats to help them remember to social-distance. Check out this article about it. After you make your own hat, you could make one for every member of your family!
Mission 2: Write an acrostic poem about how you are feeling and coping with the “new normal.” To get started, write the word PANDEMIC vertically down the side of a sheet of paper—you can use just a word starting with each letter, phrases, or even sentences (and they could rhyme)!
Example (using the word HOME):
- Hair needs cutting
- Oatmeal is boring
- Music lesson online
- Everyone together!
Mission 3: Using one cube of post-it notes, make a tower as tall as possible! How high is your tower?
Mission 4: Uh-oh…you have just been shipwrecked on an island and Mother’s Day is coming! Create a card, poem or letter to send to your Mom and put it in a bottle! Hope it arrives in time!
Mission 5: Become a NIM–ble player! Suss out the strategy of the two-player game of NIM! Lay out 20 objects (pennies, M&M’s, checkers, etc.) on a table or the floor. Take turns with your partner picking up 1, 2 or 3 objects per turn. The winner is the person who does NOT pick up the last item!
Mission 6: You will need a collection bag, a notebook and pencil for this mission! You have 15 minutes to collect one item for each letter of the alphabet. Write the alphabet down the left side on a page, so as you find an item, enter it next to the letter it satisfies! This mission may be done inside or outside. (FYI: Items MUST be returned to their original locations after collection!)
Thanks to NH-DI volunteer Jill Schoonmaker for continuing to keep us inspired with these missions!
Secret Codes: Part 4
Want to learn how to send secret messages and crack codes? Check out the fourth episode in our Secret Codes series by clicking below.
In case you haven’t been following this series, here is where you’ll find Part 1, Part2, and Part 3.
Hats off to NH-DI volunteer Steve Greenwood for developing this series!
Some websites we recommend:
Earth School
Welcome to Earth School! Do you want to embark on a month of daily adventures—or Quests—that will help you understand and celebrate our natural world, while learning about how dependent we are on our planet? Now more than ever, we need to protect, nurture and care for Earth—so join them to learn something amazing every weekday between Earth Day (April 22nd) and World Environment Day (June 5th). Within each lesson, you’ll find fascinating resources compiled by Earth experts and ideas for getting involved in ways that count.
Amazon Future Engineer
The Amazon Future Engineer program is focused on increasing access to computer science education for hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. Geared towards students grades 6-12, Amazon is offering virtual robotics, computer science courses, and a free way to use music to learn to code.
Craft in America
Available free: their treasure trove of inspiring, educational materials that explore craft as a part of American history, culture, art, and technology. Over the past 14 years, Craft in America has built its website with a multimedia library of lesson plans and accessible learning resources that are at the fingertips of teachers, students, and families.
American Museum of Natural History
Since its founding in 1869, the museum has advanced its global mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate information about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education, and exhibition. We definitely recommend exploring their online resources, which includes virtual tours, online events, and so much more. Check out OLogy, their science website for kids, which features games, stories, hands-on activities, and videos. Or maybe look at their Curriculum Collections, with activities, articles, and videos. Their YouTube channel takes you behind the scenes of their exhibits, into their world-class collections, out to the field with researchers, and through scientific concepts that illuminate the natural world.
Some STEAM activities to try:
Draw Your Own Floor Plan
Think about a dream space you’d like to design. How big would it be? What would you include?
Volleyball Machine Challenge
Can you build a volleyball machine? It will need one part to launch a ping pong ball over a net and another to return the ball. How many back-and-forth volleys can you get before the ball touches the ground?
Some activities created by DI headquarters
Bridge the Gap Instant Challenge
For this STEAM-based activity, students will need to build a freestanding bridge as tall as possible from one square to another.
Virtual Instant Challenge: Copy That
For this challenge, you will create a drawing to be copied by friends and/or family members without them seeing it. This is a two-part challenge with a time limit for each part. The only materials needed for this challenge are crayons and paper.
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…