Plants, family, and storytime… oh my!


As I wrap up my second week at The Children’s Museum of Houston, I’ve fallen even more in love with this internship. From working on the floor to designing my own activities, I’ve been challenged to apply science in a creative and engaging ways for our visitors.


Monday: On Monday, I spent the morning in EcoStation looking for fun and interesting plants growing, in the hopes of identifying them and then researching them to make informational cards for visitors to read. With my pictures and leaf samples in hand I went back to my desk to start identifying them. And let me tell you: identifying plants from scratch is hard. It took most of my morning to identify the ten or so plants I wanted to highlight, and then I finally got to research them and pick out a fun fact to focus on. Then I designed the small information card, printed them out, laminated them, and hung them up for visitors to enjoy!


My "Take a closer look" cards
Mexican Marigold from EcoStation


Tuesday: I got special visitors on Tuesday… my family! The aunt and uncle I’m staying with while in Houston brought my younger cousins to visit, and I got to show them all the coolest parts of the science exhibits, even the ones I don’t work in. Some highlights included the animal puppet theater at EcoStation, playing with water currents at FlowWorks, and origami art at Paper Engineering. From there I took them to Power Science Lab and we completed all three labs together! The best part of my day was when my uncle pointed out the plant information cards I had made the day before and said they were really interesting, without knowing I was the one that made them.
(P.s. yes Alleigh approved of letting me show them around for an hour, no slacking off here!)

Super Powered Summer!
FlowWorks Exhibit



Little Scientists


Wednesday: On Wednesday I spent the morning prepping materials re: using a giant paper cutting machine to cut construction paper. The afternoon however was much more exciting, when I got to do my “Storytime with a Young Ambassador” at a public library. I read Rosie Revere, Engineer to about seven kids, who all oohed and ahhed over the marvelous inventions of Rosie. I spent about 15 minutes coloring with two of the older kids, and then we went on to make paper airplanes from the template in the activity workbook. These kids were pros at throwing their airplanes, they even went about 20 feet away! Sorry to say that my own paper airplane did not go nearly as far as either of theirs did… It was a great opportunity to complete that community outreach, and now I’m left wishing I could do it again!



Engineers in the making

Thursday: Dear whoever invented Monopoly, I would like to pay my respects for having the ability to invent a board game. My Thursday was spent wracking my brain for a way to combine environmental science, the theme ‘transformation’, halloween, and a board game. After brainstorming, several failed attempts, and a lunch break, I had finally settled on my idea. I called it “Escape The Cave” - a game visitors would play to learn about how water moves through caves, the power of erosion, and all the spooky animals (re: bats) that live in caves. I spent the rest of the afternoon designing the board game itself, and the fun fact cards visitors would read throughout the game.

Escape The Cave online design


Friday: On Friday, I started creating the physical prototype of the board game. I printed out the online template I had made as well as the fact cards and game pieces, to make sure all the components would actually work. Since it’s for the October Halloween theme, it won’t be out on the floor for me to see personally, but it was still very fun to create. Later this afternoon we’ll again be trialing the lab I created last week after making a few minor adjustments, and I can’t wait to watch more visitors little scientists try it out.

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