Earth Rocks! Spring Break Fest
Celebrate our amazing planet during DOE Spring Recess with Earth Rocks! — a week-long festival of hands-on exploration and discovery at Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
Plan Your Visit
Choose your date, see the programs, and get your tickets:
Themes
Throughout the week, activities are organized around three Earth-themed adventures:
🌱 Soil, Plants, and Food
Discover the fascinating world of plants and sustainable food systems through interactive workshops and demonstrations. Explore plant-based dyes, learn about hydroponic farming with Mi Oh My Farms, and pot your own scented plants with Brooklyn Botanic Garden educators to take home and nurture.
♻️ Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
Transform trash into treasure through hands-on recycling and upcycling activities! Join Bloom Again Brooklyn for flower reuse workshops, learn about composting with Cues, participate in Friends of Brower Park’s upcycling projects, and discover how worms recycle food scraps into valuable soil with the Department of Sanitation.
🐞 Animals and Insects
Get up close with fascinating creatures during our live animal programming! Meet tarantulas and touch blue caterpillars during bug encounters with entomologist Dr. Aaron Rodriques, dance to a high-energy bug-fact-filled show by Ants on a Log, and join our stuffed animal care station where kids can bring their favorite fuzzy friend for a “check-up” using medical tools like an stethoscope, otoscope, and thermometer.
🔋 All Week: What’s the Juice? — STEM Project
Visit our Nature’s Engineers STEM makerspace to experiment with sustainable energy! Did you know you can use natural objects like potatoes to make a battery? Build your own food-powered battery and test how many potatoes are needed to light a bulb. Can you find a fruit that works even better?
🛖 All Week: Earth Homes – Art Project
Visit our ColorLab art studio to create an Earth Home sculpture! Inspired by the work of artist Beverly Buchanan, use natural materials like clay, sticks, and rocks to create and personalize your own small home structure.
Additional highlights throughout the week include animal yoga with Fit N Play Mama, oyster reef exploration with Billion Oyster Project, healthy eating workshops and rooftop gardening activities with Magnolia Tree Earth Center, and more.
Drop by during DOE Recess and discover why Earth Rocks! – the perfect spring break adventure for curious young minds!
Program List
Select a date above to view programs happening each day.
Animal Encounters
Create traditional Chinese calligraphy using brush and ink in BCM’s ColorLab Art Studio. Artist Nelson Leung demonstrates this ancient art form, guides you through creating your own pieces, and shares the cultural significance of Chinese calligraphy.
Animal Veterinary
Learn how to use tools such as a stethoscope, otoscope, and thermometer to perform a check-up on a fuzzy animal friend at our animal care station.
Animal Yoga
Embark on a wild and wonderful yoga journey. Led by Danielle Medina, creator of Fit N Play Mama, this playful animal-themed class will have you stretching, bending, and moving in ways you never imagined.
Billion Oyster Project
Discover the intricate connections between predators and prey in New York Harbor with Billion Oyster Project’s NY Harbor Food Chain Activity! Using interactive cutouts and field guides, participants will build their own food chains and explore how energy flows through aquatic ecosystems. Join us for a fun, hands-on experience highlighting the vital role of oyster reefs in supporting aquatic life!
Bug Out!
Bug out with entomologists Dr. Aaron Rodriques and Louis Sorkin. Learn about a wide variety of bugs while you come face to face with these fun crawlers.
Climate Rock Puppet Party!
Join award-winning NYC Kindie climate-rocker and puppeteer, Esther Crow, and her 11-yr-old son, Vincent, as they teach climate and sustainability lessons to kids through song, dance and chants! This show empowers kids with the knowledge and confidence to be leaders of social/climate justice actions, and to understand the importance of the natural world around them.
Climate Storytime
Join Climate Families NYC as they share stories about climate justice and how we can care for our environment through our actions!
DSNY Compost
Stop by the DSNY (The City of New York Department of Sanitation) table to learn more about composting and recycling in your own home!
Earth Day Medley
Tune in to Ants on a Log’s musical performance for children and other childlike people. Their award-winning music centers positivity, social justice, and silliness. This special Earth Day show features themes of climate justice, sustainability, and environmental education.
Friends of Brower Park
Learn more about the science behind structures of plants by using carnation flowers and colorful dyes with Friends of Brower Park.
Hattie Carthan Film Screening and Art Workshop
Learn about Brooklyn’s Tree Lady in this animated short film celebrating the life of Bed-Stuy community environmental leader Hattie Carthan. After the 15 minute film hear stories from the filmmaker and Magnolia Tree Earth Center, then make art inspired by Hattie Carthan’s community activism.
Healthy Eating Workshop
Learn simple recipes with the Magnolia Tree Earth Center that you can make at home using fresh herbs!
HNH Apiary
Meet a beekeeper and learn all about honeybees, beehives, and beekeeping with HNH Apiary.
Indigo Dyes
Join textile artist Nelise Charles for a fun and hands-on workshop where you’ll explore the amazing history of indigo and learn how to make this beautiful dye! Participants will get to create their very own Shibori designs, from dyeing the fabric to crafting a unique pattern.
The Nature of Music: Aerophones
How can you create music through air? In this workshop led by musician Nedelka Prescod, create an air-animating instrument using recycled and organic materials and explore mindfulness through breathing exercises. Then as a group, we’ll use air to animate our instruments to make music together!
The Nature of Music: Chordophones
In this workshop led by musician, Nedelka Prescod, create your own kid-friendly guitar from recycled and household items. Listen to and learn music from iconic singer/songwriters whose songs spoke of humanity and caring for the environment, then create your own original tunes!
The Nature of Music: Idiophones
Explore rhythm and percussion in this workshop led by musician Nedelka Prescod. Create your own percussion instrument out of recycled materials, engage in rhythmic play that supports listening and community participation through “call and response” and “jamming”.
Nature Walk and Planting Workshop
Join Farmer Max from the Magnolia Tree Earth Center and learn about caring for different plants on a nature walk on our Rooftop, then work together to plant seedlings like mint, rosemary, and chives to create a sensory herb garden on our Rooftop. Pot up a seed to take home and track your plants growth throughout the Spring!
Pachamama Musical Performance
Flor Bromley will be performing selections from her album “Pachamama,” a bilingual (English and Spanish) collection of songs inspired by Mother Earth. It’s a perfect tool for teaching children about taking care of nature and learning about how nature takes care of us.
Painting with Fruits
Beet roots, turmeric stems and marigold petals have been used for thousands of years to create dye for clothing, paint, ink and more. Join our friends at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to design your own one-of-a-kind fan with beet, turmeric, and matcha ‘paint’, then pot up your very own marigold flower to take home and care for!
Pollinator Puppets
Join Esther Crow and her puppet, Bernie the bee, and learn about how bees, bats and butterflies pollinate many of the fruits and vegetables we eat, and how important they are to maintaining healthy ecosystems world-wide. Participants get to create their own puppets inspired by these creatures!
Sami the Squirrel
Join this play about Sami the Squirrel on their Great Acorn Adventure and learn about the importance of saving, sharing, spending and recycling.
Save The Earth
Join Cues for a demonstration & take-home scavenger hunt of “how to save your garbage from the garbage” – a hands-on lesson of the “4 Rs” (reuse, repair, remake, recycle). There will be various bags of things destined for the landfill, which kids can help save from polluting the Earth.