This summer, "e" inc. created a new curriculum along with its existing 3 field trip projects, all focused on the many ways our children can experience the summer.  In camps, we had young scientists exploring ten different science ideas about their planet as part of our Science in Summer camp series.  At our home base, young museum goers learned about Weather and Climate in a Changing World.  Our children also joined our free trips to the Allendale Urban Wild or our investigations at Fort Point Channel - a program in partnership with Boston Properties. 

Summer is a transformative season. Children and youth are engaging with new people, trying new experiences, and visiting places they have never seen before. It is a time for opening the senses, feeling a bit more "free," investigating new ideas, and making some new choices and, of course, making a difference for the Earth. 

This summer, the children that visited Fort Point Channel rowed in Dragon Boats in the harbor, had watershed lessons, made art pieces (on display at Atlantic Wharf), and collected and marked crabs, later adding their 'citizen science' data to an invasive species research grant conducted by Coastal Zone Management.

The research effort consisted of our children handling and identifying green crabs, as well as, the typical native blue crab species. Children tagged and numbered the invasive green crabs as part of a study on blue crab species in our area.  Our young visitors loved taking data to help local marine researchers understand what sort of changes are taking place amongst the beings in this waterway. It was exciting to learn the data protocols and later, to add their numbers to the large data set. The children felt so excited to be part of something so important!

inaugural exhibit "Weather and Climate" returns to the Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, we look back on our first months as museum leaders and the excitement we felt. First, was the challenge of learning how to structure the rooms and hold children's interest for four hours.

To augment the pieces on the floor, we created a paleoanthropology video rap to explain how nature's physical structures can tell stories. Then we added homemade anemometers and the investigation of real tree cores (the latter, so children could uncover the secrets that their piece of wood had to tell).  We also created plays so student visitors could appreciate the unintended consequences of the early adopters of fossil fuels. 

Upon entry to the museum, each child was given a workbook to answer questions posed about the ideas at every station, as well as a place to add the new concepts about energy they were learning -- from how it is made, to what it can do, and how they use it at home.

We call our teaching approach on the floor of the museum "supported learning" because we use the informal methods in the museum to achieve solid learning outcomes. Both students and teachers loved it and the reviews sent to us were excellent.