Courses Listing
Looking for more details on Summer 2010 courses? Read on for full descriptions (subject to change).
Registration begins on March 3.
Learn More about Courses | View Schedule (PDF)
3-D Avatar Creator
Grades: 3 - 4
Explore 3-D techniques to bend, stretch, pull and flatten basic shapes and transform them into amazing 3-D models! Create an avatar by exploring 3-D modeling and rendering techniques. Take home a CD with your creations. No programming experience required!
All About Me
Grades: 1 - 2
Learn about how you move, grow, and sense the world around you. Visit exhibits including the Human Body Connection and Seeing is Deceiving and play games to test our muscles, senses, and brains. Observe bones and skeletons, build models, and look at other animals to compare our similarities and differences.
Animal Adventures
Grades: 1 - 2
Observe live animals throughout the Museum to learn about everything from insects to snakes to birds. How do animals find food and shelter? What are their similarities and differences? Play games to model food webs and learn about the interconnections between all living things.
Backyard Ecology
Grades: 6 - 8
Discover how scientists study the environment by looking at the relationships between different organisms. Spend time in the Suit / Cabot lab studying soil and water samples collected from the Museum's "backyard." Conduct an insect survey in the park to learn more about how organisms interact with the environment.
Basic Botany
Grades: 6 - 8
In the Suit / Cabot Lab, you'll learn all about plants! Discover how they turn sunlight into energy through photosynthesis, learn about their structure, and find out what makes some plants toxic.
Be a Scientist
Grades: 3 - 5
Do you want to be a scientist? What does that mean? Engineer, mathematician, zoologist and designer are all titles held by scientists. Sample a few of the sciences, and see what the missing link is that binds them all together.
Cartoon Animator
Grades: 3 - 4
Create fun cartoon characters, animate them, and develop your own storyline. Publish your cartoon online and share with friends and family. No programming experience required.
Chemistry with a Bang
Grades: 6 - 8
Explore the basics of chemistry in the Museum's own Suit / Cabot Lab. Create chemical compounds, analyze acids and bases, and make things glow. Finish the week by making rocket fuel and testing it in the Museum's backyard.
Cooking Is Chemistry
Grades: 3 - 5
Who needs a lab when you have a kitchen? Putting together a recipe often means preparing a chemical reaction. Learn how chemistry changes the properties of matter by watching bread dough rise or by frying an egg, and explore how acids and bases influence our food.
Crime Lab Boston
Grades: 6 - 8
Many have seen the television show CSI, but how much of it is reality? Learn about forensic science and the tools that scientists use to collect and analyze trace evidence. Explore how we use forensic evidence to test our hypotheses on everything from fossil records to today's crime labs.
Digital Movie Creator
Grades: 5 - 7
Create a storyline for a movie. Use a video camera to produce a short film, and learn digital techniques to edit and publish your work. Premiere your movie to your family on the final day, and take home a DVD copy to show off your Hollywood magic to friends!
Dino Detectives
Grades: 1 - 2
Observe fossils, models, and live animals to recreate the world millions of years ago, when hundreds of species of dinosaurs lived. In the dinosaur exhibit, check out a real Triceratops skeleton and a life-size model of Tyrannosaurus rex, and investigate fossils from other prehistoric plants and animals. Make animal tracks, and learn what they can tell us about an animal's behavior.
Discoveries and Inventions
Grades: 3 - 5
Span the globe to explore some of the world's most amazing discoveries. Learn all about astounding inventions and even build some of your own! In this course, you can use an Archimedes screw; touch lightning in a bottle; design a computer; and watch a demonstration of the largest air-insulated Van de Graaff Generator.
DNA Lab
Grades: 6 - 8
Unique to each individual, DNA contains instructions for making every part of you and is found in bacteria, insects, plants, and dinosaurs. Build models and experiment with DNA transfer in the Suit / Cabot Lab. Get a hands-on look at many tools of today's biochemical scientists.
Environmental Extremes
Grades: 3 - 5
Go from one extreme to another! Explore the biggest, smallest, hottest, and coldest things in the universe. Learn all about extreme temperatures during a super-cold science presentation. Discover a light microscope, and watch a demonstration of the Museum's scanning electron microscope that can magnify things up to 200,000 times!
Explore Solar and Fuel Cell Cars
Grades: 3 - 4
Explore the science of hybrid cars that have zero emissions. Transform a fuel cell car into a hybrid vehicle using solar cells. Learn experimental techniques to record observations and calculate fuel efficiency. Model your next-generation transporter and have fun!
Extinction and Evolution
Grades: 3 - 5
Learn how species have evolved and why some have gone extinct — from dinosaurs to humans. Step back in time to discover prehistoric animals at the Museum's dinosaur exhibit , and then have a look at the animals of today with a field trip to the Stone Zoo. This program also explores our own evolution with a visit to the Museum's Human Body Connection exhibit.
Fizzle and Sizzle
Grades: 1 - 2
Create and experiment with fun and unusual materials such as bubbles, oobleck, and ice cream to discover how things are made. What happens when you take things apart or mix them together? What makes things change shape, size, or color? Visit the Light House to experiment with rainbows and try chromatography in the Discovery Center.
Green Chemical Engineering
Grades: 6 - 8
In our Suit / Cabot Laboratory, explore what scientists are doing to create new materials, new chemicals, and new fuels that are friendlier to both us and the living world around us. This hands-on week concludes with a green chemical engineering challenge.
Grossology
Grades: 3 - 5
Get ready to get dirty and experience the gross side of science! Touch dinosaur poop, make snot, and perform a dissection. Have fun with these disgusting discoveries!
Live Animal Center Internship
Grades: 7 - 8
Work in the Live Animal Center to learn about our scaly, furry, and feathered friends -- where they come from, how they live, and how to care for them. Assist the animal center staff by helping to clean, feed, and handle a variety of animals. On your last day, give your family a tour of the Live Animal Center, demonstrating your new knowledge and skills.
Mario-style Video Game Creator
Grades: 3 - 7
Explore the process of creating a game in the style of Super Mario Bros. Create your own animated characters, projectiles, cheat codes, and the big boss. Publish your game online and share with friends. No programming experience required!
Mini-Med School
Grades: 6 - 8
Be a medical student for a week! Learn about physiology, anatomy, and staying healthy. Explore research and topics that are in today's headlines: cardiac health, exercise and wellness, cancer, and other diseases.
Model Organisms Explorer
Grades: 6 - 8
Scientists use organisms — from bacteria to primates — to study human biology and to create medicines. In this hands-on class, walk like a mouse, "grow" your own molecules, and visit with some of the Museum's live animals in the Suit / Cabot Lab.
PC / XBOX Video Game Creator
Grades: 5 - 7
Using C#, program a video game that can be played on the PC or XBOX. Create your own sprites, backgrounds, score and projectiles. Share your game with friends. No programming experience required!
Physics Fundamentals
Grades: 1 - 2
Explore the diverse fun of physics as you take in a Lightning show, play with robots in Cahners ComputerPlace, and explore force and motion in Science in the Park. Build towers, design boats, and more as we investigate science and engineering.
Program AI Robots (AIBO)
Grades: 3 - 7
Learn to program the hall-of-fame robot AIBO to dance, obey voice commands, take pictures, and play soccer with other robots. No programming experience required.
Science of Sports
Grades: 6 - 8
What does it take to be a top athlete? In our Suit / Cabot Lab, discover the mechanics and energy that go into hitting a home run, throwing a touchdown pass, or leaping over the last hurdle.
Science Theater
Grades: 3 - 5
Interested in acting? Want to learn how teaching science can be educational and fun? Work with Museum presenters and our artistic director to develop and perform a short science theater presentation. This course lets you see how dramatic arts can help demonstrate interesting science topics. On the last day of class, perform your theater piece on our Shapiro Family Science Live! Stage for Museum visitors.
Space Explorers
Grades: 3 - 5
Visit outer space without leaving the planet! Blast off to discover a world beyond Earth. Learn about stars, planets, and moons with a star lab projection, telescope demonstration, and observations of the Sun!
Space Science
Grades: 6 - 8
Ever wonder how staring at the stars can help you understand the actions and reactions on Earth? Or how gravity, forces, and chemistry on Earth help inform our understanding of the stars? Spend time in our Suit / Cabot Lab to examine space and time.
Species Survival Systems
Grades: 6 - 8
What is in the venom of a rattlesnake that makes it a successful hunter? And what makes a mouse such a successful survivor? Explore camouflage, chemical poisoning, and venom, and many other traits that help organisms survive.
Swarm Robots
Grades: 3 - 4
Build robots that work and play together. Plan communication strategies for the Swarm Robots and explore how they cooperate and play games. No programming experience required.
The Science of Games
Grades: 4 - 6
Do you like to run, jump, and throw a ball? How about board games? Did you ever want to create your own game? Have fun while learning about games from all cultures, ranging from ancient Native American traditions to the baseball of today. You'll be surprised to learn what they all have in common!
Toying with Science
Grades: 1 - 2
Learn about physics, chemistry, biology, electricity, math, and more as we play with toys and build our own. Enjoy a Live Animal presentation and compare toy animals to the real thing. Create your own board games, puzzles, spinning tops, and more, and experience a Museum Design Challenge.
Treasure Hunt
Grades: 3 - 5
Through fun games and a focus on leading Swedish methods, students learn how to draw and use maps. This unique class builds decision-making, collaborative, and creative skills while building self confidence. Off-site adventures provide real-world experience with orienteering, natural-land-feature use, and satellite navigation systems.
Video Game Creator
Grades: 3 - 4
Enjoy playing video games? Learn to create 2-D games and publish them online to play with friends. No programming experience required!
Volcanic Explosions
Grades: 4 - 6
Ever wonder why some volcanoes like Mount Saint Helens erupt dramatically while others like the Hawaiian volcanoes slowly trickle lava? Spend a week exploring the science behind explosions through hands-on demonstrations and activities.
Wacky Waves
Grades: 6 - 8
Waves aren't just found in the ocean; they are all around us, all the time. Light, sounds, and radiation all come in the form of a waves. In the Suit / Cabot Lab, conduct hands-on experiments, and you might even discover that wacky waves surprise you.
Water Works
Grades: 3 - 5
Make a splash with this program about water, one of the most amazing molecules on Earth! Discover how water shapes our world, and learn about our environmental impact on aquatic systems. This program also explores water habitats with a trip to the New England Aquarium.
Web Application Developer
Grades: 5 - 7
Learn to build rich, cross-platform applications using the latest Web technologies! Program applications to access the Web without using a Web browser! No programming experience required
Web JavaScript Programmer
Grades: 5 - 7
Explore JavaScript programming techniques to create cool and fun effects for your own website. Discover the creative process of Web development with cursor trails, sparklers, shining buttons, and rollover effects. No programming experience required!
