This summer our STEAM space, the BOOMbox, is exploring engineering. We’re focusing on a different field of engineering every two weeks to help kids understand the breadth and overlap of this STEAM topic. While the BOOMbox offers drop-in experiences, our Be the Scientist program series for grades 3-5 provided a more structured exploration of civil
It's Star Wars Day! I know that it's giving away my age, but I remember when the very first Star Wars movie came out. I watched it from a swing-set in the small, fenced-in playground at the foot of the giant screen of the drive-in movie theater. The playground was surrounded by the same heavy
Recently, I've had the opportunity to take part in a great program sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences. It's called the Science Action Club. There are actually three different modules, or curricula, available - Bug Safari, Bird Scouts, and Cloud Quest. I was able to receive the training for Bug Safari close to home.
This Earth Day, I hope you will be sitting on cloud nine* with these last-minute tips and ideas for bringing NASA GLOBE Observer Clouds and citizen science into your library. Best of all these are evergreen - not just for April 22! TIPS AND TRICKS Brush up on Cloud Observing with these simple tips
With the weather finally warming up, we decided to focus our latest STEM program on something fun and practical: vermicomposting! This was an hour long program for 16 kids in grades 3-5 with all supplies provided by the library. Here’s what we did. In the days before the program, we prepped all the supplies. Each
There's no way that anyone in my area hasn't noticed all of the rain we've had lately, but it wasn't until I was returning home from work one night to discover the steps to and my porch covered in a carpet of wriggling, desperate, earthworms seeking refuge from the water, that I realized just
It's beginning to show signs of spring. Trees are budding. Insects are beginning fly and buzz about. I see turtles sunning at the edge of the lake. But before that -- It was cold. Really, really cold, for my part of the world. In a part of the country where freezes usually
Eyes are fascinating things, and the variety of types of eyes and the ways they see makes for interesting programming. I recently created a new school outreach program called Seeing is Believing, which addresses some of the basics of types of eyes and how they see. This 50-minute outreach visit is different from ordinary library
The first time I encountered a mouth bow was at Girl Scout camp many (I'm not about to tell you how many) years ago. It was a camporee weekend, packed full of activities and workshops for us t'weens and teens. One of the workshops was musical instruments from things we could find in the forest, mostly.
This is the time of the year when children in most every part of the country look forward to awakening to a fluffy white blanket of snow in which to play, to sled, to scoop into a bowl for snowcream, and most importantly, to get them out of a day at school. In my part
