STEAM Themed Thursday

We started a new weekly afterschool program.  The three youth librarians take turns planning and running the program each week.  Because of special programs and schedules I finally got to do my first event on Oct 17.

Ramps and Rollercoasters

We had a nice turn out and the kids (an any adults with them) had a great time!

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!

Gingerbread Houses

We were so excited to host another school-age program before Christmas...A Gingerbread House Build!  We had 60 people attend!  Kids of all ages (3-adult) had fun creating gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, and goodies (pretzels, mini-marshmallows, gumdrops, Fruit Loops and mini candy canes).  If I were doing the program myself I would have made up cups that were a "variety" because kids would only take two cups.

Check out these awesome creations!

Egg Drop

On Saturday I got to host our tween STEM event--Egg Drop!!  We had a decent size group and the kids worked hard on their contraptions.  It took them a while to figure out the best ways to keep the egg safe.  But they all kept working at it until they did it (or until we ran out of time!)

Supplies:
cardboard
cardboard tubes
raffia
yarn
pipe cleaners
newspaper
tissue paper
pom-poms
Q-tips
straws
lots of masking tape

At least a quarter size piece of the egg had to be visible and the contraption had to fit into a shoe box.

Some of the designs that keep the egg safe!

The ultimate test!
We took the kids out back to drop their egg from the upper level!  Most of them even survived!

I will be doing the program again at another library this Saturday.

Late Night at the Library!

I was so excited to help with our annual Late Night at the Library for kids going into 3rd through 5th grades.  The program lasts from 7-10 PM.  We had a nice turn out and the kids were very well behaved and had a good time!

Activities!

Create hoop gliders,

 Torpedo fish.

 Super Hero flyers...

Then throw them off the balcony!!

Parachute Fun

Snacks--Pretzels, grapes and water bottles

Laser Mazes

(Staff setting up the mazes)

Create Fundamas

Songs and Simon Says

BONUS:  No mishaps!  No tears!  All parents picked up their children on time!

Supersized Games!

I was able to help developed a Supersized Games program for summer reading for the "tweens".  It is going out to all 10 libraries.  I have hosted three of the events so far.  I will be hosting two more this summer.

It has been a ton of fun, even if our numbers have been kind of low (any tween event is usually pretty small, though).

Supersized Games

Connect Four
A yellow shower curtain divided into 42 squares (seven across; six down)
The tokens were dessert plates.  I used Velcro to attach the tokens to the shower curtain.

BINGO and Memory
To go along with our superhero theme we had two sets of 25 superheroes printed onto 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock.  Each person/team put out their superheroes into a 5x5 grid and used dessert plates as markers.

These same cards were used for supersize Memory.

Yahtzee
Super easy and super fun!  Large foam dice, buckets, and a supersize score card (enlarged onto a 17 x 22 paper).

 Pictionary

Jenga (larger, but not supersized!)

Bananagrams

144 8x8 "tiles" printed on cardstock

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