LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

It was hard at first to wrap my brain around doing a science based session of story times as a stay alone program for 10 4-5 yr olds for 30 minutes. In my 9 years of experience, I've never hosted a stay alone story time (crazy right?). How do I even begin? How messy should I get? What happens since I'm by myself trying to conduct experiments without parental help? What about food allergies? What kinds of questions do I ask? I decided that the whole session would be us pretending to be scientists, using their tools, and experimenting/observing a new theme each week. One of my main concerns was organizing the flow. I like stations but it's hard to do that without more supervision so we tried to do as much as possible as a group first and then had a few choices to play with afterwards. This was a great jumping off point for me from the Boston Children's Museum STEM Family Activity Guide & the Boston Children's Museum Sprouts. Then I went to Pinterest for t...

I had one of those eureka moments at a meeting a few weeks ago, when a fellow staff member was talking about her writing group and the importance of having open ended free writing components. I thought, "Hey that's tinkering too!" I think if we all look hard enough we can find lots of examples of tinkering that we do in our everyday lives or in already established library groups that doesn't have to involve electronics. I've always been a "don't read directions first" kind of person, which was tough during my schooling years but that's the beginning of my tinkering. Can I figure it out without looking at the directions? We all develop educational and life strategies based in part by our personalities. For me, this tinkering led me to always jump head first into technology. I was never afraid of "breaking it." I'm the kind of person that purchases Adobe Photoshop and just begins by pressing all the buttons before I crack open a tu...

Here's a conundrum:  How do you get people to build skills, take initiative, feel a sense of ownership of what they form, build, or create if all you offer are one-shot projects that can be completed quickly and have a pre-set outcome? That's where tinkering and playfulness should take over after a skill have been developed. Libraries can be the best place for tinkering simply because we are not in the grading or judging business. Allowing for open-ended playful exploration can be scary as a projector coordinator because you have to trust that something will come out the experience that can justify the use of materials, tools, and space. If you're looking for some philosophical firm ground to stand on, here are two excellent videos to have your decision-makers watch: TED Talk: Science is for Everyone - Kids included: Beau Lotto & Amy O'Toole TED Talk: Play is more than just fun: Stuart Brown