LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

Last Wednesday the children's room hosted a Mad Scientist Lego Challenge night for families. This coincided nicely with our upstairs Lego Contest display. I'm really getting into themed weeks at the library for programming although the caveat would be if someone was on vacation that week, they'll miss out on everything surrounding the theme but as librarians we learn that we can't always please everyone (but we sure try hard!). Upon entry to the night, participants were given a bingo card and asked to complete at least 3 of the 9 challenges. We had 9 different challenges around the room: Challenges: Can you building something that... 1: Survives the zip-line 2: Goes down the ramp 3: using littleBits 4: using just one color 5: using 2 x 2 bricks only 6: Stop motion 7: Lego firewalk (this one differed in our other challenges. We told the parents we'd like them to experience what it was like to step on a random Lego. In true kid fashion, they all said the wa...

This week was beach week. We headed down to Duxbury Beach on Monday night and held a Mad Scientist Sand Sculpting Event. It was open to all ages without any prizes or contest pressure. The sand sculpture event has been a staple of the summer reading program for many years. Beach sculpting is an art and science of its own. One thing we had to think about was when the tides come in and out. It just took a quick call to the Harbor master to schedule. Holding library events off site is a great opportunity to meet and greet new people. Some families joined into the event just because they happened to be at the beach that night. I loved that the sand sculptures all had their own stories, a wonderful literacy component. This one picture above was a favorite of mine, complete with a light house and guard house. For our weekly Backyard Ballistics on Tuesday, we built boats with DC motors, AA Battery packs, and popsicle sticks. We left out a wide variety of floating materials such as fo...

This week we had perfect weather for some outdoor science activities! Our Mad Scientist Mondays included outdoor stomp rockets.  They are very easy once you get the launchers made (which we did with teens in a separate program). We used PVC pipe, a piece of wood for stabilizing, rubber tubing, and some PVC brackets.  You can also make it entirely out of PVC . Once the launchers are complete, you need 2 liter soda bottles, tape, and paper for rockets to complete the experiment. Discarded magazines and scrap paper come in handy. The most important thing is to leave out a PVC pipe of the same size so kids can measure the width of the pipe. The rocket needs to loosely fit on the launcher. We used this template and edited it to fit our pipes. It is also imperative that there are no air leaks in the rocket so use lots of tape when assembling. What was interesting to note is that our 99 cent generic soda bottles broke only after a few jumps while Sprite bottles held up for 2 hou...

Our Mad Scientist Monday for this week was dedicated to cartoonist and "inventor", Rube Goldberg. I just learned that he did not actually create these machines but rather drew these silly contraptions only on paper. What an influence he has had! There's a challenge devoted to him every year hosted by high schools and colleges all over the county. You can sponsor your own teen team at your library or encourage them to apply to the international online contest. Each year has a goal such as apply toothpaste to a toothbrush and the kids are invited to make their own contraptions to accomplish the goal. Having an open experimental day like ours would be a great introduction to forming your team.   Set up:  Thanks to our iPads we featured a video with 75 Rube Goldberg Ideas to explain our vision. We also downloaded the official game, Rubeworks app ($2.99 for the iPad).  Each level features an animated cartoon Rube Goldberg challenge like squeeze an orange for orang...

Every year as children's librarians we ask ourselves, "What am I going to do when I visit the schools to promote summer reading?" We love schools visits. They have a direct impact on our summer reading statistics. Where else can you talk to a captive audience of 100 + kids who begin coming in THAT DAY to sign up? I cannot tell you how many years I have seen the summer reading report at the end of the year change based on which elementary school I had/had not visited in previous jobs. But once you get your foot in the door, how do you excite an auditorium full of kids who are eagerly counting down the days till the school is over? Some librarians act out plays, sing songs, dress in costumes, bring props or just rely on some personality and a loud voice.  This year, with science as the theme, it was an easy sell for me to incorporate littleBits into our poster props. Although ideally I had wanted to master Arduino by now, we have been too busy planning for summer events to...