Month: February 2018

Kids STEM Lab: Paper Airplanes

- Sowing Seeds Librarian

Building paper airplanes is the stuff of kids and imaginations! Intentionally incorporate some physics vocabulary terms, with some experimentation time, and you have a fun program to interest kids of all ages!

The skinny: This was one of the more challenging programs I have done. I try to plan our STEM programs so families can come together, and we have kids who are three years old with siblings who are ten years old. That is a big age difference, but my most successful programs happen when I am able to find activities that allow kids of differing abilities to acomplish the activity successfully. Airplanes are hard because making folds in paper according to directions is not something that young kids intuitively know how to do. But, it was a great exercise in showing kids how to follow directions, a necessary skill in STEM.

The cost: $0. I set out some white copy paper, pink construction paper, and masking tape. We also set out pennies from past programs that we keep saving and re-using.  We already had all these supplies on hand, but if you needed to purchase the paper and masking tape, I would estimate maybe $5 in supplies. At most.

Resources: There are great blog posts out there on airplane STEM, but two of my favorites planning this program were Airplane Science by the Show Me Librarian and STEM Paper Airplane Challenge by Kids Activities. I also utelized the book, Paper Airplanes by Jenny Fretland VanVoorst.

  How it went: We began the program by sitting in a circle and talking about paper airplanes that we had all built in the past. Kids have great stories about planes they have built and the different “flight” patterns their planes exhibited, and it was a great way to build comradery in the group and practice conversation skills. By the way, I had kids in the program as young as two and as old as ten. I then took out the book, Paper Airplanes by Jenny Fretland VanVoorst. Depending on the group you might want to read the whole book, or, especially focus on pages 12-19. For our program, we focused on the physics vocabulary terms” Gravity, Thrust, Lift, and Drag. After reading the book I wrote those four words on the whiteboard and we talked a little bit more about those terms with an example paper airplane.

Then, it was time to build! I had a copy of instructions for the classic paper airplane open on the table similar to these instructions. Some of the kids were able to fold the paper into the pattern, and some of the kids needed help. No problem. After building their plane and testing it out, I invited the kids to tape down pennies on the wings, bottom, and sides of their plane. The challenge was to see which plane could carry the most money “cargo”. After the kids had taped their pennies down, we had a contest of sorts where the kids were able to line up and fly their airplanes. WARNING: be sure that no one is in the way when the planes go off! Pennies will fly off the planes, so just be careful! No one got hurt, lots of kids were laughing and smiling, and parents chuckled to see their kids having so much fun. It was also a good way to practice safety instructions, which will be helpful as these kids keep advancing in school and taking science courses.

The kids loved seeing their planes fly! We went back and forth between flying and going back to the work tables to tweak designs. In the end, I think we had about 12 rounds of flying the planes before having everyone sit down in a circle again. We talked about our four physics vocabulary words that help explain the forces behind why paper airplanes fly (and crash). I also was able to ask the kids how much money cargo their plane was carrying at the last round. After a few minutes of sharing, I asked the kids to help me pick up pennies that had dropped to the floor. Kids asked to keep their airplanes, which was a good sign they had enjoyed themselves. One mom commented that during a snow we had about a week ago her sons had built 70 paper airplanes in one afternoon! However, they did not know how to fold them correctly, so none of them flew as well as her sons wanted. She specifically brought her boys to this program to learn how to fold their paper airplane so it would fly, and I think her sons were some of the proudest children all evening of what they were able to build by following the directions.

Have you done a paper airplane STEM program at your library? I would love to hear about it!

STEM Themed Valentine’s Day Party

- Sowing Seeds Librarian

Valentine’s Day. For some, just the mention of it brings smiles, for others groans. For myself, I have always appreciated the day as a time to remember family and friends who I care about. And, for the elementary school children who still make Valentine’s day bags and boxes and exchange valentines, it seems that the day is a positive one for them as well. What to do when a library STEM program falls on this special holiday? Plan a Valentine’s Day STEM Party, of course!

The skinny: This was a fun program because I gave myself a constraint: I wanted to create multiple activity stations that all used Valentine’s Day conversation candy hearts. In the end, I was able to design five different activity stations, and after each program, I polled the kids to find out which stations were their favorite. Each station received approximately the same number of votes after running the program five times for five different classes. So, you can be sure that there will be activities here that your kids will enjoy. What I also liked about these activity stations was that they were easy enough for three-year-olds to do successfully on their own, but fun enough for fifth graders to also spend an hour with. This made a great multi-age program, making it perfect for families.

Cost: $30 for all the supplies. I ran this program five times, with brought the cost to about $0.40 per child. But, there were lots of supplies that we did not go through, so it gave me lots of extras for next time. Once I had the stations set up I just kept the supplies on a table in my storage room and brought out the activities for each class as they came to the library for the program, so we were able to use all the supplies over and over. The only casualty was the hearts that we used in the boat building station. Those dissolve in the water after an hour, so be prepared to throw those away (and have a sink nearby for kids to wash their hands!)

Preparation: I set up five tables, each with a different station. I also went online and added some photos of examples of the station to a PowerPoint slide which I printed out and placed at each table as a table-topper so that the kids could see at a glance what the challenge was at each table. I wrote out a few instructions, and voila! Done! Here is a PDF of all the table toppers I had out. All the photos are my own.

Valentine’s Day STEM- Candy Hearts Table Toppers

Resources: I utilized two blogs for the activity stations. Please check out STEM Activities for Kids and Joy in the Works blogs!

How it went: We had five stations for this program:

Candy Heart Wall

Supplies needed:  Candy hearts, straws.

Heart Bridge

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, index cards, plastic cups.

Candy Heart Chute

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, plastic cups, toilet paper rolls, old cardboard, boxes, clothespins…basically any supplies you have in your craft room. Just set it out and watch kids figure out creative solutions with it!

Candy Heart Boat

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, tin foil, containers for water.

Candy Heart Catapult

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, tongue depressors, spoons, rubber bands.

This was a very fun program! It reminded me of my Valentine’s Day party when I was in Kindergarten! We had been doing lots of very specific STEM programs over the past few months, and having multiple activity stations that kids were free to choose and spend as much time as they liked with was a welcome change, for the kids and me. We began with some circle time (all the kids and myself sit in a circle) and we had a great conversation as our program opener about Valentine’s Day, how the kids decorated their boxes, who they care about, etc. Then, I walked around the room and introduced each station by telling kids what the challenge was and what supplies they had to work with. I told them they were free to go where they wanted to but to try to get to all five stations before the hour was up. After that, it was time to ask them to use walking feet to choose the station they wanted to try first! I also did this with a class that needed more structure, and we timed it so that groups of four students were at each station for ten minutes (which seemed like a great amount of time for them).

This program was very relaxed, and parents/grandparents/teachers were able to walk around and participate as much as the kids. Even the stations that I had worries about turned out to be incredibly popular, such as the Build a Candy Heart Wall. I watched the kids work on their walls for 10-15 minutes, in kind of relaxed zen-like state. It was wonderful. After an hour I invited the kids to come back into a circle and asked anyone who had something to share to raise their hand. We went through multiple comments, and then I took a poll to find out which station was the most popular.

And, that is a wrap! I hope everyone is having a wonderful February. Spring is on the way!

littleBits in your Library’s STEAM Programming

- Sowing Seeds Librarian 2 Comments

Before last year, littleBits were not familiar to me. However, there is a very generous foundation in my city and they invited me to submit a grant on behalf of Brewer Public Library’s youth services department. I looked online for ideas of popular STEAM based programming at public libraries that I could use as models for my grant, and WHAM, I discovered littleBits. We have a very small budget at our library, and I try to stretch our funds out as much as I can (I budget $0.30 a child, and usually I try to do programs for less). This grant, though, allowed me to dream about programming options that I would never be able to offer otherwise.

LittleBits has many kits to choose from, but I wanted something that would allow me to lead a whole room filled with kids in a program. I wrote my grant to purchase the Workshop Set, which allows 8-24 kids to build at the same time. This kit was $2,000, but I was able to purchase it on Black Friday when they had a sale. Also, as an educator (or librarian), you receive a 5% discount. if you plan to write a grant to purchase your own littleBits, the good news is that littleBits has already done lots of research for you that you can refer to in your grant application. On their website, littleBits has already posted how littleBits connect to Common Core standards, so you have lots of research to prove the value of this resource.

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