Tissue Paper Art

Thursday Thing--Tissue Paper Art 

Fun for all ages!

Star Wars STEM

Our first Thursday Thing activity landed on May the 4th, so of course we had to do something with Star Wars!

We had four different STEM activities related to Star Wars:

Dagobah Slime

We used this recipe

Mix together:  1/4 cup of glue

1/4 cup water

Several drops of food coloring

Stir in 1/4 cup liquid starch  

Keep stirring until all liquid is absorbed

Ewok Catapults

Just before the program started I got the idea of making the little Storm Troopers for kids to try to knock down.  (small pictures of storm troopers taped to clothespins)

Relative Size of Star Wars Ships

Definitely for the older kids, but it was interesting...

Use the Force
Without touching your hands to the 3rd cup, place it on top of the the other two.  Supplies given:  cups, craft sticks, yarn, paper clips, paper binders, clothes pins, rubber bands, paper plates

Here are a few of the creative ways the kids meet this challenge!

I had two teen volunteers to help (thank heavens!) with 25 attending the event (which is a good number for my little library)

The library district provided some Star Wars crafts...

Star Wars activity sheets, Chewbacca bookmark, origami Yoda, and (leftover) Styrofoam balls to make a Death Star or planet.

Here is a Death Star the library page made as an example:

Circle Art

For one our after school art activities we made circle art.  We traced a variety of different round things--masking tape, lids, and card board cut into 4" circles.  Here are some of the results:

Thursday Thing: STEM

STEM challenges for the week included building with plastic cups, jumbo craft sticks, and blocks!

Marble Mazes

I've started a new weekly program at my smaller library for families and elementary-aged kids.  I call it Thursday Things--meaning every Thursday we will have something going on at the library!  However, the "higher ups" made me assign a topic to each week AND they changed the name of it to "Thumbs-Up Thursdays" (which I really don't like!)  The goal is to have programs that will be very simple--meaning low prep and low cost.   Here's the weekly themes:

1st--STEM
2nd--Art
3rd--Legos
4th--Games
and the 5th in March--Building

So we started off with a super fun STEM activity--Marble Mazes.

Supplies
Cardboard (boxes, tubes...)
Craft sticks (regular & Jumbo)
Paper plates
Straws
Colored paper
3 oz Dixie cups
Masking tape
Hot glue
Scissors
And of course, Marbles.

(We could have probably used a box cutter, but the wanted the kids to the as much as possible on their own).

For our purposes I explained that we wanted the marble to get from one spot to another in an fun and interesting way.  I used the pictures of the completed project from these websites to help get them thinking. (FrugalFun4Boys, another one from FrugalFun4Boys, and BuggyAndBuddy).  I did NOT give them any "instructions".

We had five families (14 people) which is a good size for our small library.  The kids were super creative and very engaged.  They came up with some really fun designs.  One dad really get into the process too!

 Three girls played with this marble maze for about an hour--adding to it, decorating it, racing marbles...It was so fun to watch!

I'm so excited our first program in the series went so well!  I'm excited for the other activities we will be doing through April!