Let the countdown commence! How many months, weeks, days, minutes, even seconds until Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve and other special holidays? Calendars, dates, and units of time take on much more meaning when you’re anticipating a special event. In Countdown: Counting with a Calendar, challenge learners to find different ways and units to express the time until a long-awaited event.
This December 31st, count down the final seconds to 12 o'clock—noon, that is—at a science center near you. Centers across the country will be turning "Happy New Year" into "Happy Noon Year" with special midday events so even the youngest revelers can watch the ball, or balloons, drop and still not stay up past bedtime. Maryland Science Center in Baltimore will ring in 2014 with all kinds of New Year themed fun at its "Midnight Noon" celebration. More than 1,000 balloons will drop during "Countdown to Noon" at Science Central in Fort Wayne (pictured here). And at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, visitors can celebrate strokes of midnight around the world, at 11 am, 1 pm and 4 pm California time!