CARIBOU, Maine — Nearly 50 guests visited the Nylander Museum of Natural History during its new “R3 Week” event, which highlighted the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle in honor of Earth Day.
Museum board president Gail Hagelstein said the new event featured numerous activities which families and guests could participate in, including a planting station where visitors could take soil and plant their own marigolds; a station in which guests could use a small branch, some string, spoons and keys to create their own wind chime; a scarecrow making station where household goods could be used to create a scarecrow; and a decades old mop bucket in which visitors could submit suggestions as to how it can be alternatively used instead of thrown away.
The Nylander Museum’s “R3 Week” focused on recycling household materials, and included a station at which guests could create their own wind chime using branches from fallen trees, string, and old cutlery.
The event was intended to encourage guests to look through their own materials at home that would have otherwise been thrown away and consider alternative uses. Hagelstein said several board members and volunteers came together to donate all the materials. Kimber Noyes, for example, donated all the soil, seeds, and supplies for the planting station. For the wind chimes, museum officials gathered branches that came down during the winter, and board Vice President Travis Michaud “broke a few drill bits” creating holes in the cutlery and keys.
By Thursday, about 50 people had attended the event, which Hagelstein said was a good number considering that the museum had never held a recycling themed week in the past.
Michaud agreed and said that in looking through guest books from prior years, the museum had only seen about a dozen people come in during a school vacation week. He added that members of the museum board are working hard to create an atmosphere with constantly changing events and activities within the Nylander to attract more visitors.
The Nylander Museum’s “R3 Week” featured a planting station, with soil, seeds, and plastic pots donated by board member Kimber Noyes, at which guests could plant their own marigolds and also see the weekly progression of the plant.
(Chris Bouchard)
For R3 Week, Michaud said The Cubby, a local thrift store, donated fabric and materials for scarecrows, and that he broke “about half a dozen drill bits” helping to prepare the windchime station.
“Household things have other uses,” he said. “They might not be useful for you, but they could be for someone else.”
Looking ahead, he said the museum currently plans to have one unique guest speaker every month, and that guests are currently booked into the fall.
Ideally, Michaud said he’d like the community to know that the Nylander isn’t just “sitting there,” but that its members are “actively doing things,” and that they offer far more than “rocks and shells.”
He said the museum and its offerings expand people’s knowledge of science, and encourage young people to get involved in STEM fields, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in schools. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.
“This is an extension of STEM,” said Michaud. “Most of STEM currently deals with the technology aspect of science, and this deals with the natural history that that technology is built on.”
