creativity and STEM projects

Today marks my 10 month anniversary of when I started here at Sticks Library! I can't believe how fast the time has flown by and how much fun I've had since I started, and so many fun things ahead of us! 

Thought I would share some more Summer Reading fun (since I was so remiss about doing it during SR!)

A big push in libraries and schools in the past couple of years has been projects which fall under the category of S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)--as we all know the U.S. is so painfully behind the rest of the 1st world in these subjects--so Prairie Dawn and I scheduled S.T.E.M. projects for K-12th graders one day every week during our 6 weeks of summer reading. I say we, but all I did was put it on the calendar and Prairie Dawn did an awesome job of finding interesting projects for the both groups, which we split up into K-6th, and 7th-12th grades.
Simple fun on our Make & Take Monday: water bottle bubble makers

Not a S.T.E.M. project, but rather one of our Make & Take home crafts that the kids loved was the Bottle Bubble Blowers!

Directions:

1. Cut off the end of a water bottle (do in advance, too hard for younger crowd).
2. Have the kids take their water bottle and stretch a clean sock over the missing bottom.
3. Using duct tape, tape around the sock, so that it stays attached to the bottle.
4. Go outside and mix Dawn dish soap and a little water in flat dishes--go easy on water. Add lots of food coloring for rainbow bubbles.
5. Dip the sock end into your soapy water mix.
6. Unscrew the lid and blow into your bottle--DO NOT SUCK IN or else you're eating bubbles!

STEM Science day: team building exercise--the egg drop!
 The Egg Drop:
This was definitely an interesting STEM experiment to watch. We counted the kids (K-6) off into teams and asked the parents to help them build a shelter for their uncooked eggs which would protect the egg when we dropped it from the top of a 7ft. ladder. The catch is there are only 4 things to build it with: each group received 50 straws, 12 popsicle sticks, tape, and shoot, I forget the other things...but you get the point!
We encouraged parents to let the kids trouble shoot it--some hover parents definitely took over, some kids were bossy, some kids had awesome ideas. It was fun and the kids loved counting down and watching Prairie Dawn and I drop the egg holders. Everyone's eggs survived the drop onto the grass...not so for the drop over the sidewalk. We had fried eggs on the sidewalk that very hot day!

STEM Science day for the Teens: they made
Eukaryotic cells out of junk food.

Trying CELLing this to the Teens
Not sure where Prairie Dawn got this idea--she used Pinterest quite a bit, so maybe there--but she gave the teens a diagram of a Eukaryotic cell and junk food galore to build their own, while discussing different cells and all things sciency. A fun STEM project, fo sho!

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