Beeswax Candles are good for all of us!

By Hannah | Published: April 1, 2011
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What’s the difference between 100% natural beeswax candles and “regular” candles? Paraffin candles, the most common type available, are made from petroleum, the same crude oil that is refined to make the fuel for our cars, lawn mowers, and airplanes. When you burn a paraffin candle, you release some of the same compounds found in auto exhaust, which can be risky and cause soot stains if you’re not burning the candle in a well-ventilated area. Beeswax candles burn cleanly and smell naturally delicious. They also burn a long time for their size, and give off a bright yellow light reminiscent of sunlight. Best of all, beeswax is a renewable resource… the bees can always make more! For Honey Time this spring, we’re offering a candle-making workshop suitable for the youngest kids: Candles made from beeswaxrolled beeswax candles. Using sheets of pressed beeswax, kids can create colorful candles, perfect for gifts!  During the workshop we’ll also learn about how bees live and build their hives. It’s a great treat for those who are excited for the upcoming production of Winnie the Pooh. I hope to see you there!

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What’s in the Greenhouse?!

By Stacy | Published: March 28, 2011

Stacy Normand is a Cultural Programs intern at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. She is blogging about the Youth Imagine Project. Read her first post here.

Have you peeked out into our backyard lately? Have you noticed a new addition? We have a greenhouse now! Isn’t that exciting? We have started planting lots of new fruits and vegetables for our garden, but how will you know what is what? I mean really, how many people know the name of every type of vegetable and fruit (and trust me, we picked some awesomely unusual ones!) and know exactly what it looks like? I’m betting not many!

This is where one of our Youth Imagine students, Elfriede, steps in. She is thinking about painting a picture of all of the different plants in our greenhouse, including kale, carrots, melons, broccoli and so much more! Along with the image, she will also label each plant with its name, the amount of time it takes to grow, and also the vitamins that you can get from eating it. We aren’t exactly sure where this painting will go just yet, but you can be sure it will be located within sprouting distance of the greenhouse so you can reference it.

It will still be a little while before the greenhouse is all set for our visitors. Soon, the plants will all be in their raised beds, and children will be free to explore it and participate in a variety of programs that are being designed specifically for the greenhouse. (Plus, it’s still chilly out, so it wouldn’t be nearly as fun to play in it right now!) When you do get a chance to poke around in it, make sure to keep an eye out for Elfriede’s painting!

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Polishing a Project

By Stacy | Published: March 18, 2011

Stacy Normand is a Cultural Programs intern at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. She is blogging about the Youth Imagine Project. Read her first post here.

It’s mid-term week at USM, which means I’m in the dregs of research and outlines for papers. Personally, I think the best part about doing a presentation, or writing a paper, is polishing them until they sparkle, and just finding that perfect phrase to get my point across. It’s really the little details that matter. This Tuesday, a couple of students began putting the finishing touches on their service-learning projects, and even picked the dates for their programs!

One of our students, Rahma, has decided to do an education program called Where Your Food Comes From. She wants to teach children that their food does not just come from a grocery store, or a kitchen, but is actually grown in a garden first. She hopes to do this program in the Explore Some More room, and then bring the kids to our new greenhouse to show them the plants we are growing! It’s very exciting!

Another one of our students, Suzan, wants to do an education program focused on language. She hopes to teach the kids a little about her own language, Arabic, by teaching them some Arabic letters, and showing the kids how she writes them. Did you know that Arabic is written from right to left, instead of left to right? Isn’t that awesome? Suzan is thinking about doing this program in the We Are Maine exhibit.

These kids are really getting to the point where they can focus on the details of their projects. For example, we asked them how they would keep kids excited while doing their projects. Their answers ranged from food, to art, to music!  Hopefully, next week, we’ll have more amazing ideas to share with you!

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Service Learning & Student Voice

By Stacy | Published: March 11, 2011

Stacy Normand is a Cultural Programs intern at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. She is blogging about the Youth Imagine Project. Read her first post here.

This week, the Youth Imagine Project focused on proposal writing. We discussed how a proposal is used, the different sections of a proposal, and then the students began writing their own for their service learning projects. While talking about introductions, I asked the students to think about what makes their projects important, why should someone pay attention to what they are doing? They came up with many awesome answers, but it got me thinking, why is the Youth Imagine Project important?

There are many benefits to service-learning projects. Studies have proven that it can lead to higher graduation rates because it keeps students more engaged with the classroom by connecting academics with real-world experiences. However, as a whole, Portland’s drop-out rate is better than the national average, and our students’ school, Portland High School, has drop-out rates that are better than many other high schools in Maine. In other words, while higher graduation rates are grand, they aren’t exactly the biggest concern. There are many other statistics that prove the benefits of service learning, and the ones most relevant to the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine share the same factor: voice.

Looking back on my high school years, I can honestly say that one of my biggest frustrations with school was a lack of voice. Even the student government, the voice of the entire student body, really didn’t seem to have a say in the decisions that affected us, and it really hurts student morale and confidence. One of the great benefits of service-learning projects is that it gives students voice, especially in the case of the Youth Imagine Project, in which they design their own project. Studies have proven that service-learning projects that allow students to have their own voice lead to students participating more in political engagement and are more connected to their community. One study has even stated that students become more accepting of differences, which I find poignant considering that many of our students are designing projects centered on the idea of teaching children about accepting cultural differences, and the prevention of bullying.

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Structuring Ideas

By Stacy | Published: March 4, 2011

Stacy Normand is a Cultural Programs intern at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. She is blogging about the Youth Imagine Project. Read her first  and second posts.

As an upper-level college student, I am often faced with the dilemma of narrowing down a very broad topic into a very detailed thesis.  As you might know, writing papers is all about structure, and you can’t build a strong argument on a shaky thesis. This challenge frequently leaves me staring at my textbooks for hours trying to figure out how to take a grand idea and turn it into something practical. So, I understood the strife of our students this Tuesday as they tried to narrow down and combine their interests and concerns into a manageable service learning project.

We started off with a worksheet which posed the challenge to create a service learning project by combining an interest and a community issue. I personally think the greatest difficulty in creating a project is finding the means of combining both ideas into something that can actually function. For example, it’s easy to say you want to combine your interest in dance with your interest in cultural education, but then little details get in the way, like, how are you going to talk to kids about culture and keep their attention? Are you going to have them participate in the dance, or are you going to perform for them? What dance will you perform and why is it significant? These questions can cause cracks in the foundations of projects, and sometimes they are hard to patch up, but these kids worked through them like champs!

 They have come up with a lot of brilliant ideas. For example, one of our students is concerned with teaching kids about where their food comes from. In other words, she wants to show kids that food doesn’t just come from a grocery store. She is thinking about doing a program in our new greenhouse in order to teach kids about this topic! Isn’t that awesome? There are lots of other great ideas that include topics such as the history of technology, dance, culture, food, art, and giving kids some time to dream. Be sure to check back for individual student interviews, which will allow you to get to know these kids and a little about their projects!

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Playing Grown-Up

By Stacy | Published: February 25, 2011

Stacy Normand is a Cultural Programs intern at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. She is blogging about the Youth Imagine Project. Read her first post here.

                It’s been a busy week at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. With the Explore India event, and the new program surrounding celebration of Mawlid (did you get to meet some of our students? They were helping at both events!) we haven’t had much time to sit down, organize our thoughts, and answer some questions. That being said, sometimes the big questions come up in hindsight. The other day, we began to realize that we had one big question to answer as we proceed with the Youth Imagine Project: why the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine? Why should we get to create and host this amazing program, with a group of kids that is well beyond our normal age bracket? We began to think of our mission statement – that the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine is very focused on facilitating discovery and imagination through exploration and play. How could this mission statement be related to the Youth Imagine Project?

                Honestly, it comes down to two words in that mission statement: discovery and play.  The Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine offers a safe space for all families and children. It’s that very atmosphere offers a unique opportunity for students to play at being grown up; that is, discover themselves and their interests while being able to make mistakes and try new things. So, I guess the Youth Imagine Project is a lot like dressing up as a firefighter in the Fire Truck exhibit, only these kids are trying on certain careers, passions and personas.

                When you really think about it, play time is a time to try something new without fear of judgment. There are no such things as mistakes during play, only opportunities for improvisation and learning. We hope to bring this mission and attitude to every meeting with these kids.  While it’s important to gain professional skills, it’s just as important to know what makes you tick. We hope that by developing their own service-learning projects, students will be able to try out a potential interest that could become an important aspect of their life… or not.  Sometimes it’s just as valuable to know what doesn’t work for you.  So, in short, what we really want to do is offer these kids some time to discover themselves through play, while giving them a few mental toys to use along the way.

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Snowflakes and Thought Drops

By Stacy | Published: February 21, 2011

Normally, as a college student, I welcome any snow day so that I can forget my academic responsibilities, remain in my pajamas, drink hot cocoa, and just enjoy a day’s worth of relaxation. Not so this winter. As the Community Engagement Intern, I found myself wishing that the snow would stop showing up on Tuesdays so that we could get the Youth Imagine Project up and running.

The Youth Imagine Project is an exciting new program which works with immigrant high school students from Portland High School to develop their own service-learning project within the museum, while simultaneously offering them professional development workshops to help them gain skills for college and the workforce. It’s exciting not only because we are working with a new age bracket of students, but also because…well…these kids are awesome and have so many ideas to share with the Children’s Museum and Theatre staff and visitors!

You can imagine our excitement when the snowstorms stayed at bay, and our group of students was able to show up for a brainstorming session. Our kids came up with so many great ideas (what I sometimes like to call, in the spirit of weather metaphors, “thought drops”)! They are taking so many awesome avenues in their projects, including psychology, technology, tradition & culture, gardening, music, and drama.  Many of them expressed interest in running education programs with our visitors, while others are thinking of other ways to use their skills and interests.

We can’t wait until next week when we freeze these thought drops into more solid project ideas! I’ll be writing posts weekly, so stay tuned for further developments!

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SNEAK PEEK: MEET THE CAST

By Emily | Published: December 2, 2010

Opening night of Santa’s Reindeer Revue is finally here!  Performances are Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays today through December 19 at 4pm each day.  For a complete list of show times click here.

As a sneak peek, we’re lucky enough to find out about some of the cast and characters from the actors themselves!

Brooks "Dasher"

Brooks is playing Dasher in the play.  Dasher is a hip, boom boxing reindeer. Brooks is 10 years old and this is his 4th year working with Reba. He enjoys learning all aspects of the theatre from Reba and especially loves all the voice exercises they do as a group.  On the way to rehearsal Brooks likes to sing to get himself into character and really enjoys when he gets to charge at Donner on stage.

Andrew "Donner"

Donner is played by Andrew who describes his character as the oldest and strongest reindeer.  Andrew says it’s fun to play Donner as an ancient and grumpy old man and he gets into character during warm-ups by thinking about what it would feel like to be that old.  Andrew is 14 and this is his second mainstage show at the Children’s Theatre.  He has also appeared in Kids on the Block and Custard the Dragon at the Children’s Theatre.

Sophie "Jane"

10-year-old Sophie plays the part of Jane – the living “Reindeer Encyclopedia” who loves reindeer and knows all there is to know about them.  Sophie was also a part of the Beauty and the Beast production and the thing she likes best about acting is being on stage in front of a crowd!

Bianca "Becca"

Bianca plays the role of Becca, a human who is terrified by Santa’s reindeer when they first appear. Bianca’s character is the director of the play within the play of Santa’s Reindeer Revue and for inspiration she’s observed Reba’s actions as a director.  Bianca is 16 and has been involved with the Children’s Theatre since 2006 when she was in Madeline at the Theatre’s old home on Marginal Way.

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Moose Caller Extraordinaire

By Hannah | Published: November 15, 2010
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Last Saturday we welcomed Matt Tinker, Registered Maine Guide and moose caller extraordinaire, who did an amazing presentation for an excited audience in the Ranger Station. Matt has his own guide service taking wildlife photographers, hunters and animal fanciers into the forests of Maine where he helps them find animals like moose. On Saturday, he showed us moose and deer antlers and pelts so we could compare their sizes. He also demonstrated a baby moose’s call to its mother and some of the sounds an adult moose can make. Using homemade recycled tools, he also replicated many of the sounds a moose can make without using his voice! He even used a puddle of water to show the sound a moose makes when it walks through water and eats lily pads. Everyone learned how to make at least one sound like a moose.

Here are just a few of the other things we learned from Matt during his visit:

• A baby moose can weigh 35 pounds when it is born.

• A moose can live up to 25 years.

• A male moose loses his antlers every year, then squirrels, mice, and other small mammals chew on them to get minerals.

Thank you, Matt, for sharing your skills and knowledge!

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SANTA’S REINDEER REVUE IS UNDERWAY!

By Emily | Published: November 11, 2010

The trees may be hanging on to the last of their fall leaves but over at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, Santa’s reindeer are gearing up for the holidays.. the holiday production of Santa’s Reindeer Revue, that is!

I sat in on a rehearsal for the production last week and was greeted by an exuberant group of reindeer-in-training.  Before rehearsal officially began there was loads of energy bouncing around the stage and I knew immediately that I was in for a treat!

The afternoon started off with a circle of yoga stretches followed by vocal exercises.  When everyone seemed thoroughly warmed-up, actors took their places on stage to act out a scene in which Santa’s reindeer are showing off their various talents.  As I watched, I knew right away that the reindeer in the show weren’t the only talented ones – these actors knew their stuff!

Many of the actors in Santa’s Reindeer Revue have been in previous productions put on by the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine and their experience – and passion for theatre – blew me away!  I can’t wait to see what else they have in store.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be dropping by rehearsals, chatting with cast members, and snapping some behind the scenes photos so be sure to stay tuned for more sneak peaks of Santa’s Reindeer Revue!


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