Featured Events, Resources, & Opportunities

List of Weekly Suggested Events

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Self-Directed Learning: National Ice Cream Month

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” July is National Ice Cream Month … a great excuse to indulge in this creamy confection. With today’s self-directed learning module, begin by making ice cream at home in less than 30 minutes, and then let your curiosity lead the way. How was ice cream made before refrigeration? How does salt help with the process of making ice cream? What is the history and origins of ice cream flavors? Who invented the ice cream cone? How did we arrive at a national observation day? These are just a few questions to lead your curiosity, supporting your interests as you explore and search for the answers to all things ice cream!

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Self-Directed Learning: Sandy Shores

Sandy shores are relaxing destinations many families head towards or dream about during the summer months. Shoreline spaces not only support recreation but are also crucial to the livelihood of many! Today we explore traditions in catching fish, foraging seaweed, aquaculture, and earthscape art! Let these points of entry inspired by summer vacations ignite your curiosity to learn about other cultures and the various forms of art.

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Self-Directed Learning: Shooting Stars

Much of what transpires here on earth is seasonal or cyclical. From the earth’s 24-hour orbit on its axis to its 365-day orbit around the sun, we can track many of these cyclical patterns in terms of hours or days. But they also exist in terms of years! Even millennia! Comets are an excellent example of a larger cyclical pattern we track according to time. Annually we pass through the same tails of comets, but on a larger scale, comets orbit around the sun, passing by the earth on a more cosmic timeline. For instance, the newly discovered Comet NEOWISE passes by the earth every 6,800 years! For today’s self-directed learning module, we will let comets lead the way, asking questions, and seeking answers: What’s the difference between comets, asteroids, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites? What do you see during a meteor shower? What is NASA’s plan to save the earth from a giant asteroid? What do we know about the Chelyabinsk Meteor? – When is the next meteor shower? Shoot on over to the American Meteor Society to find out!

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Self-Directed Learning: Carl Jung Birthday

Carl Jung was one of the greatest thinkers of the modern era. His insight into the nature of the human psyche is perhaps unsurpassed, and it is no surprise that Freud chose Jung to be his protege and heir in guiding the future of what he saw as the “new science” of psychoanalysis. Freud called Jung his “adopted eldest son, crown prince, and successor.” In 1910, Freud’s endorsement led Jung to be named the Chairman for Life of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Tragically, however, Freud and Jung would ultimately diverge in their thinking, leading to a complete break between them. When Jung published Psychology of the Unconscious in 1912, Freud utterly rejected the book, dismissing Jung’s theories and causing him to be shunned by his colleagues. They would never reconcile. Ultimately, the source of the tension between the two friends stemmed from Jung’s focus on the unconscious, the idea for which he would become best known. While Freud insisted that the core of human personality and psychology was fundamentally shaped by the expression and repression of the libido, Jung saw the unconscious as the driving factor in psychology. One can quickly see how this distinction might cause a rift between the two. For Freud, the unconscious was more like a rubbish heap, a place where desires, thoughts, and emotions were left to rot. Unable to be understood or accepted by the conscious ego, all unwanted or threatening content is jettisoned, banished to the vast sea of the unconscious. As such, the unconscious, in Freud’s schema, is inert and can only impact the individual in negative ways. But if Freud’s unconscious is a dark, foreboding sea, Jung’s is a vast, unexplored continent, alive with our own history, waiting to be discovered. Like most important ideas, what Jung called “the collective unconscious” is largely misunderstood. The concept does not merely suggest that contemporary individual psychology shares the same psychic structures, or archetypes, as earlier generations of the species, but that our minds bear the remnants of the structures of mind of all life on earth. This is to say that, just as no matter is ever created or destroyed, but only recycled continuously, human beings still function psychologically as early humans and even non-human animals. While the ancient world gave us a context for understanding this, in the form of polytheism, shapeshifting, demonic possession, and nature worship, modern society denies the presence of these earlier structures in the human psyche. We are told, in other words, that we are not what we know ourselves to be. Thus, for Jung, the task of psychology and human development was to integrate both the conscious and unconscious, to realize that we are infinitely more than we perceive ourselves to be.

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Self-Directed Learning: Summertime Crafts

Summertime crafts and DIY projects can easily integrate hands-on projects with nature-based learning opportunities. For today’s self-directed learning module, we are featuring DIY projects that are ideal for the summer and can potentially support interests in botany, folk traditions,entomology, and ecology.

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Self-Directed Learning: Rainbows

Rainbows have been capturing human imagination FOR-EVAH! With summer rainstorms come the opportunity to spy a rainbow in the late afternoons when conditions are just right, sparking imagination and priming curiosity about rainbows. If you’re a fan of rainbows, you already know the sense of awe that arises from within when one graces the summer sky. But what if you understood the science behind rainbows, knew various stories and myths behind rainbows, and how they have inspired art and imagination in the humanities? Today’s self-directed learning module takes these points of entry and leads us “somewhere over the rainbow” into a better understanding behind the magic of rainbows while supporting studies in meteorology, physics, science, and history.

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Self-Directed Learning: Kitchen Botany

In the summer months, compost bins are filled with all kinds of extraordinary wonders – worms, bugs, and leftover summer fruits and veggies – in various stages of decomposition. Did you know that some of the bits of food that land in your compost bin can live a second life? We can turn many food scraps we discard into new plants and, for some discards, more food! For instance, biennial green plants like celery, bok choy, lettuce, and cabbage can grow anew if the portion of the plant from which the leaves and stalks originate. Creating a kitchen scrap garden at any time of the year is incredibly easy and equally fascinating, and it can lead to experiential learning on plant growth and biology. In today’s self-directed learning module, get a cursory look at store-bought produce you can regrow and which ones will produce more food. Plus, get a few lessons in botany along the way!

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Online and in-person events and resources shared above are done so as a courtesy and not as an endorsement. While we do our best to share accurate and up-to-date information, please take the time to confirm information, age appropriateness, registration requirements, safety protocols, and associated costs.

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Hilltown Families’ list of Suggested Events is supported in part by grants from the Agawam, Amherst, Becket, Bernardston, Buckland, Chester, Chicopee, Colrain, Cummington, Easthampton, Goshen, Granby, Greenfield, Hadley, Hatfield, Heath, Hinsdale/Peru, Huntington, Leyden, Montgomery, Mount Washington, Northern Berkshire, Orange, Otis, Palmer, Pelham, Rowe, Shelburne, Shutesbury, South Hadley, Tolland, Tyringham, Westhampton, Windsor, and Worthington Cultural Councils, local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.