MIDLAND, Texas — Spring break may be upon us, but that doesn't mean the kids can’t learn a thing or two.
The Museum of the Southwest’s Fredda Turner Durham Children's Museum has plenty of classes during the weeklong break.
Rocks, foil and water are three everyday items that, believe it or not, can teach the kids about the power of floating.
Setting sail for some interactive learning.
"We all know that boats float," the education manager for the Blakemore Planetarium Peter Neale said. "But something that's so big has to have something special about it for it to be able to float. Turns out that if we spread the weight out of a boat over a big area, it could float on water."
A perfect chance for some out-of-school kids to learn something while they're away from school.
"So today we used tin foil to give the kids a chance to build their own boat," Neale said. "Test it in the water and then weigh it down with some rocks to see if it'll float and for how long. Then if their boat sank, they pick it up, dry it off, redesign, rebuild and come back and try it again. And that whole process is what we call the engineering process."
And spring break doesn’t have to be a break for learning for these potential engineers.
That’s why the Children's Museum said “all aboard” to some vacation education.
"So we are hosting STEM classes and art classes all week," Neale said. "Today we did one on boats."
And it was all hands on deck for some trial and error.
"I think the most important way that a kid can learn is by trying things for themselves," Neale said. "When we started, I saw a bunch of different designs. Some of the kids had a big bucket, some of them had a small cup kind of thing, one sort of had an actual like boat, canoe shapes. And then as time went on, we noticed that a lot of them sort of converge into one design which ends up just being some sort of bowl or like a square container shape. And they're doing all of that on their own. All we're doing is facilitating the journey for them."
And this is only the beginning of the journey, as the museum is hosting all sorts of different classes this week.
This shows that kids can still acquire some knowledge even if they’re not on school grounds.
To learn more about the museum's events during spring break, visit the Museum of the Southwest's website.