Many thanks to Julia Reid of LEPMPL for this guest post!
Inspiration, it is said, can come from the unlikeliest
places. For the YS staff at LE Phillips Memorial Public Library, inspiration this
summer came from the toilet. According to Weird
but True! Gross: 200 slimy, sticky, and smelly facts, “95 percent of people
don’t wash their hands long enough to kill infectious germs after using the
toilet—and 10 percent don’t wash their hands at all” (145). Who wouldn’t want
to drum up some programming from a fact like that?
So this summer, stirred by the National Geographic World of
Weird but True books, we transformed the Youth Services area into a STEAM fest,
with eight activities, experiments, or craft projects, each paired with fun
facts from the series. For example, the “Build a Bridge” station was motivated
by these three facts:
- It is said that
Vikings collapsed a bridge in medieval London and inspired the song “London
Bridge is Falling Down” (Weird but True!
300 Outrageous Facts from History, page 87).
- A rooster was
one of the very first car passengers to cross New York’s Brooklyn Bridge (Weird but True! 300 Outrageous Facts from
History, page 128).
- The London
Bridge that kept falling down is now in Arizona, in the United States (Weird
but True! 2: 300 Outrageous Facts, page 18).
Participants were challenged to
create a bridge that could 1) span two tables spaced one foot apart and 2) hold
the weight of books. Each participant was given 100 popsicle sticks, Elmer’s
glue, and binder clips for clamps, and tested how many books their bridges
could hold before breaking.
For stations like the bridge station, we prepped our (super,
amazing) high school volunteer team with questions that they could ask
participants to deepen the experiment:
a. What shapes are you using? What other shapes
can you try? What shapes do you see most often on bridges that you cross over?
b. Where
is your bridge the strongest? Where is your bridge the weakest? Can one part
hold a greater load than the other? If so, why?
c. Are
you using patterns in your bridge? Are the sides symmetrical? Why or why not?
d. Do
you have left-over sticks? Where will they help the most?
After coming up with a few activities, we assessed whether
we were satisfactorily reaching all age ranges, interests, and abilities.
Some activities were easy (and budget-friendly) to put
together, like the measuring station, which tested whether there was truth
behind the claim that “the length of your arms stretched out is about equal to
your height” (2, p32). This station just called for butcher paper, tape
measures and yardsticks, and pencils.
Others were more complicated, like the germ station, where young
scientists tested how many drops of plain and soapy water a penny could hold to
learn about surface tension and the benefit of adding soap to wash away germs.
One of my favorite was inspired by chameleon and camouflage
facts. Crafty participants chose a habit background and a white die-cut
chameleon. Using markers, participants colored the chameleons so they blended
into the scene. Younger participants
could instead learn about the benefits of camouflage with our bean table game.
We filled a bean table with brown pinto beans and plastic toy animals;
participants were challenged to see whether it was easier to find a camouflaged
(brown) animal or non-camouflaged (colorful) animal.
Labels: school age programs, STEAM programs
