Featured Events, Resources, & Opportunities

The KO FESTIVAL hosts its 31st & final season July 22-31, now on the Hampshire College campus in Amherst. WEEK 1: FLUSHING (Make Room for Somone Else),” a collaboration between 2 artistic leaders, Eric Bass of Sandglass Theater (Putney, VT) & Linda Parris-Bailey of Carpetbag Theatre (Knoxville, TN), who are passing leadership to the next generation. It’s about family, legacies + what it means to retire, bestow & inherit. 7/24 at 8pm, the ever-popular KoFest STORY SLAM returns with an appearance by Sara Felder. WEEK 2 features Clear Creek Creative from Rural KY with “EZELL: Ballad of a Land Man,” an outdoor, daylight, all-ages parable also about family legacy & environmental extraction (fracking). Dates/times/info/sliding scale tix at kofest.com

List of Weekly Suggested Events

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Self-Directed Learning: Campfires

Many families enjoy the great outdoors at night with a campfire during the summer months. Learning about fire safety and extinguishing a campfire properly are two top priorities, and after that, let your curiosity lead the way. Today’s self-directed learning module includes these learning priorities and encourages curiosity about fire chemistry, how to build a campfire, different types of campfires, foods to prepare over an open flame, and campfire stories!

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Self-Directed Learning: Stone Fruit Season

So far this summer, our fruit-based learning has included strawberry, blueberry, and cherries. The first two are a type of berry, and cherries are a type of stone fruit! The summer begins with berries, peaks with stone fruits, and ends with apples. Seeing as it’s mid-summer, let’s learn through the lens of stone fruits in today’s self-directed learning module! Pick up a basket of freshly picked stone fruit at your local farmers’ market and get inspired by its juicy sweetness to learn about botany, agriculture, pastry arts, culinary arts, chemistry, living art, and even fine art through the lens of fruit!

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Self-Directed Learning: Unseen World

There is much which is imperceptible to the human eye, either because it moves too fast, too slow, too small, or is all-encompassing. We can unveil this unseen world to us through the use of film and microscopes. The use of tools to help us see a world that exists right in front of us is a fascinating experience. What else might we not be able to see or detect yet someday be able to with the invention of new tools and resources? How does perceiving an “unseen world” contribute to our perspectives on life, and how might it impact our way of being in the world? Today’s self-directed learning module takes this concept and unfolds it by illustrating what we have access to seeing using cameras, film, and electron microscopes, leaving us to ponder what we might be missing, which is literally in front of our eyes!

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Self-Directed Learning: Canoes

Rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds offer pathways for exploring the change of season via canoes, affording opportunities to experience our local landscape from a vantage point often not accessible on foot. Whether in a canoe or kayak, paddling on the open water offers a unique perspective on witnessing wildlife and the change of seasons. If you don’t have a boat for paddling, check with your local outdoor outfitter or campgrounds for boat rentals, including Tully Lake Campground in Royalston and Zoar Outdoor Adventure in Charlemont. Discover the traditional art of crafting a canoe and its history with today’s self-directed learning module. With a historical and cultural appreciation of canoes and kayaks, there are many unique waterways in Western Massachusetts to take these crafts out to explore and connect with our local landscape. Learn more about waterway resources in Western MA in our related posts, Urban And Rural River Walks and Trails Highlight Natural and Human History.

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Self-Directed Learning: Fermentation

Turn your kitchen into a fermentation station! Kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, and sourdough can be made any time of year, but the best time is when your garden, CSA, and farmers’ markets are bountiful in fresh ingredients. Plus, fermentation is a great way to support experiential learning about chemistry and cellular biology through the lens of food! Zymology (the science of fermentation) supports these learning concepts. Still, fermenting foods is a rewarding way to spend time in the kitchen as a family and later serving up fermented concoctions during family dinner night! Today’s self-directed learning module explores the science, biology, pastry arts, culture, history, and methods of making fermented foods!

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Self-Directed Learning: Rewilding

Today, let’s explore rewilding, an attempt to reverse the destruction of our natural world by reintroducing keystone animals. What’s a keystone animal? We’ll start our learning there, learning what happens when they are no longer a part of an ecosystem trophic cascade) and how their reintroduction (rewilding) can impact our environment. Today’s self-directed learning module is an excellent catalyst for getting curious! Search online to discover what megafauna once roamed New England. See if you can list which local animals are keystone species. Learn more about the impacts of rewilding and ask yourself how you might imagine keystone animals would impact our local environment if they were reintroduced or allowed to increase in number.

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Self-Directed Learning: Summer Sense of Place

Once we round the corner of August into the final weeks of summer, our senses connect us to the season through sounds, textures, and smells unique to this time of year. An orchestra of insects begins to escalate during these weeks, with the call of heat-loving cicadas up high in the trees in the afternoons, the trill of ground crickets from fields and meadows in the early evenings, topped off with a serenade of katy-did, katy-didn’t of katydids in the evenings. During these days, when the sun is high, humidity rests on our checks and shoulders, and the colors and textures of chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, and goldenrod wave us by as we travel towards community-based summer destinations. The green leaf volatiles of freshly mowed grass, paired with the smell of ozone, petrichor, and geosmim of summer rain, trigger childhood memories for adults while strengthening a sense of place in our children. August contains a catalog of sounds, textures, and smells unique to this time of year and specific to the region. By being mindful of how we connect to place through our senses, getting curious, and letting interests lead our learning, our sensory perceptions of our summer landscape can easily support education in subjects like chemistry, biology, entomology, meteorology, and botany. Today’s self-directed learning module integrates mindfulness with phenology to support studies that can connect us to place.

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Weekly eNewsletter

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.