There's been a bit of a chill in the air the last week or so, a frequent thumping on the roof of pecans falling out of the tree in the yard, and a sense of frantic feasting radiating from the hummingbirds who frequent the feeders on my porch. Autumn is here. One of my favorite
STEM programming and Halloween just sort of naturally go together. But I was looking for a slightly "less gross" way to connect the two. Building and pumpkins don't seem to normally go in the same sentence, but we tried and it and had a blast! For the engineering portion of the program, I decided to
NASA needs your help photographing your local landscape through the new Land Cover tool in GLOBE Observer (GO). Why? One reason is to fill in details of the landscape that are too small for global land-mapping satellites to see. Land cover is critical to many different processes on Earth and contributes to a community’s vulnerability
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
Leading up to the holidays, people are often busy buying gifts and decorating their homes. So, this year, I decided to offer different decorative crafts each week in December. One of the most popular was the paper spheres. The craft is simple to do, and only requires strips of paper, a hole punch, and brads
When we first learned we’d be hosting the Explore Space exhibit from STAR_Net at our library this fall, we spent quite a bit of time browsing through program ideas and how-tos as we started to formulate our program schedule. Each month at our library, we offer an elementary-age STEAM program called Be the Scientist--and we
I came across an interesting new type of toy online a few months ago - fidget spinners. They're advertised as good for nail chewers, autistic people, children and adults with OCD, ADHD, and a variety of other conditions and issues. I don't know about all that, but I do know they are
What can you do with an hour, a large box, some assorted IKEA packing materials, a few plastic fasteners, and some kids? All kinds of cool things! We recently held another "open building" program at KCPL. This time, our building materials included one very large box, pieces of cardboard of various sizes, shapes, and thickness,
Fate is a funny thing. A few months ago I got ambitious one week, and wrote and published ( I thought) three blog articles. Unbeknownst to me, it was the same week that the STAR_Net blog was being moved to its new home on this website. For some reason, one of my articles made the
Providing programs that fit in the Engineering aspect of STEAM can seem a bit daunting. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition (c.2011) defines engineering as: “The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.”
