Education & Recreation Gift Ideas

Workforce Development and Continuing Education (WDCE), offered through Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC), has electronic gift cards good toward non-credit personal enrichment and business education classes. Right now, you can give five lessons and five full-day lift tickets to Mt. Rose-Ski Tahoe for only $129. If snow isn't the right thing, there are lots of other upcoming courses in December and January as well.

Sparks Parks & Recreation is offering holiday gift certificates, good for passes, classes, fitness centers, swimming and more. For details, call (775) 353-2376. To see the possibilities, check out the Autumn & Winter 2009-10 Activity Guide.

Need something for a budding astronomer? The Fleischmann Planetarium has Galileoscopes, inexpensive but fully functioning reproductions of the instrument Galileo Galilei used to check out the universe 400 years ago. The telescope kit comes with assembly instructions and includes a 50-mm-diameter glass objective lens of focal length 500 mm, a plastic eyepiece of focal length 20 mm (magnification 25x), and a plastic 2x Barlow lens yielding 50x when used with the supplied eyepiece. In addition, free Galileoscope workshops will be available at the end of the year and into spring of 2010. Scope it out by visiting the planetarium at N. Virginia and 16th Streets, on the University of Nevada, Reno campus, or call (775) 784-4812.

Sources: Press releases from WDCE, City of Sparks, UNR Extended Studies.

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