All children are invited, accompanied by an adult. No license is required. Fishing rods and bait will be provided. The young anglers are also invited to bring their own gear and bait or lure.  Approximately 800 rainbow trout ranging from 10 to 16 inches will be stocked under supervision of the Department of Natural Resources for the event. The US Coast Air Station will run a search and rescue demonstration at 11:15, free food is supplied by Orchard Creek Senior Living, the Great Lakes Children’s Museum will have a free fish painting activity for kids, and Apache Trout Grill will host cooking demonstrations throughout the day.

The event is hosted by the Traverse City Rotary Clubs, Rotary Camps & Services, NMC’s Great Lakes Water Studies Institute, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Great Lakes Children’s Museum, Grand Traverse Area Sportsfishing Association, and U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City.  Support for the event has come from the Traverse City Rotary Clubs and the Biederman Foundation.

Many mammals have whiskers but not all whisk. Cats don’t. Rats do. To whisk, rats use special muscles in their face to brush their whiskers against an object. From the bending bristles, rats seem to be able to decode an object’s shape and texture and Mitra Hartmann, engineer at Northwestern University, wants to understand how. Hartmann and colleagues published a 3D whisker model, which she says will help quantify what information the brain receives from a whisk.  If you can’t see the embedded video above, you can see the video here.

This cool science video is made possible through two partners, the NPR radio program Science Friday and Interlochen Public Radio, our local NPR affiliate.

The State Theatre Colorbook is a community-driven project that will culminate with the State Theatre’s 96th Birthday on July 4th. The goal is to produce a new policy trailer that will play before every movie at the State. The roughly 60-second video will feature short sequences from as many as 45 iconic films spanning the last 100 years. These iconic film clips have been simplified into a coloring book format and then printed frame by frame. Once colored, the single frames will then be photographed and re-animated back into moving images, so that the finished product will be an interpretation of the original movie clips colored by our community!

Join us in the month of May for this innovative community art project! Later this summer,  that you can see your masterpiece go by at 24 frames-per-second on the big screen at the State.

Schooner Manitou

We at the Great Lakes Children’s Museum enjoy having the Martime Heritage Alliance and the The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay as neighbors at the Discovery Center ~ Great Lakes. There is a great mix of nonprofit organizations here on the Discovery Center campus.

Starting on May 1, we have a new neighbor. The Traverse Tall Ship Company and the Schooner Manitou will set out from the Discovery Center campus and launch from Traverse City Light & Power’s former coal dock located across the street.

We are very excited to have this family-friendly activity join our neighborhood. The season starts out with educational School Ship programs twice a day on the Manitou offered by the Inland Seas Education Association. Then on Memorial Day Weekend the charter season

opens to the public. Plan a visit to the Great Lakes Children’s Museum and a cruise on the Schooner Manitou this summer.

The results of the member summit, focus groups, and community survey are all aggregated in a report that is available on the Discovery Center Planning Blog. Or you can go directly to the final report by clicking April 2012 Community Needs Assessment.

We are now working with Cornerstone Architects to develop the best ideas from the member organizations and the community to create a new vision for the Discovery Center, including a new and expanded Great Lakes Children’s Museum.

The Discovery Center ~ Great Lakes is:
Great Lakes Children’s Museum – Maritime Heritage Alliance
Watershed Center GT Bay – Traverse Area Community Sailing

This workshop is offered for children and families to build a mask or headgear for the Grand Traverse Earth Day Parade, which will place in downtown Traverse City on April 28th. This is not a drop-off workshop and children under the age of 14 will need an adult to stay throughout. Children under the age of 9 bring will require an adult to help them with their project.

The Earth Day Parade is Saturday, April 28 at 1 pm. To be in the parade meet at Central Grade School, corner of 7th & Pine at 12 noon. The parade will run from 1-3 pm, with a community picnic & special family music concert in Hannah Park afterwards.

The parade route is: Corner of 7th and Pine St. to 8th to Union to State to Park to Front to Union, ending at Hannah Park for a Community Picnic and Family Music Concert.

This mask-making workshop is offered by the Little Artshram. The Museum will be closed and no admission will be charged. However, Little Artshram will take donations for the workshop.

For more detailed information call Little Artshram at (231) 510-3491.

Dinosaurs—kids love ‘em! Come to Member’s Night for some “dino-mite” fun and feed your child’s inner paleontologist. Here is a list of exciting things kids will do at Night of the Dinosaur.

As with all Member Nights, there will be complimentary refreshments. Also, each member child may bring a guest free of charge. This is a members-only event. However, you can renew or take out a membership the night of the event.

On Saturday, April 28, we continue our partnership with our friends at the State Theatre. This month at the State, we will also bring some very special activities for the Celebration for Young Children.

We will offer an entertaining and informative short video before the 25¢ Saturday Kids Matinee. In April we’ll open for the animated feature American Tale with a unique science video of about the power of whiskers to help rats learn about the world around them.

Following the film we’ll set up in the lobby with some cool hands-on activities for the movie-goers and all of the other folks who are in downtown Traverse City for the Celebration for Young Children.

The science video is made possible through Science Friday and Interlochen Public Radio. Movie goers who bring a ticket stub to the Great Lakes Children’s Museum in the month of April will get half off the price of admission.

Based on mathematical models of the movement of fish, Maurizio Porfiri, an engineering professor at Polytechnic Institute of NYU, designed this robotic fish. If you can’t see the embedded video below, you can see the video here.

This cool science video is made possible through two partners, the NPR radio program Science Friday and Interlochen Public Radio, our local NPR affiliate.

NanoDays at the Great Lakes Children’s Museum is part of a nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering. Special science-based hands-on activities will be offered throughout the day for children and families.

NanoDays is organized by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), and takes place nationally the last week of March. This community-based event is the largest public outreach effort in nanoscale informal science education and involves science museums, research centers, and universities from Puerto Rico to Alaska.

NanoDays celebrations bring university researchers together with science educators to create new and unique learning experiences for both children and adults to explore the miniscule world of atoms, molecules, and nanoscale forces. A range of exciting NanoDays programs demonstrate the special and unexpected properties found at the nanoscale, examine tools used by nanoscientists, showcase nano materials with spectacular promise, and invite discussion of technology and society.

Our community can experience many of these activities firsthand. Visitors will make some of their own nanomaterials using scotch-tape, investigate super thin materials used in solar cell technology, and change the color of a butterfly’s wings! Other activities include an I-Spy Nano game and real nano gold. Each year includes new activities.

This project is based on work supported by the NSF under Award Nos. ESI-05322536 and 0940143. NanoDays™ is trademarked by North Carolina State University and used by the NISE Network with permission.