Cardboard Play Structures

I'm a big fan of Mr. McGroovy's box rivets, they let you make all different sizes of cardboard creations without needing all giant appliance boxes. I think the biggest of any of the boxes below was 2ft x 4ft. The rivets are reusable, though I'd say about 60% of the ones I try to pull apart do so without breaking. Still, a single $20 box of them has gotten us through 4 different builds.  I use a sharpish phillips-head screwdriver to make the holes in the boxes for the rivets. I find it makes the most secure structures if you use multiple layers of cardboard. The first  build with our set was a gingerbread house that my supervisor made. Next I created a Magic Tree House for a program to mark the author's birthday. I wanted to get some height so I stacked up a number of pallets I found in the basement, including a handy plywood platform that made it so kids wouldn't fall through the slats. That ended up being played in and loved for about three months. The tree was something a coworker had made as a thankful tree for thanksgiving. During my program the kids made "boards" and leaves to decorate it.

At some point the roof caved in and I took it off, I was suddenly deluged with dozens of concerned  kids begging me not to take it down. Instead we decided to just keep going and I made this pirate ship. I know, it looks a bit like a tugboat, but the flag and figurehead made by our ace artist library assistant help sell it. This was also very popular but the pallets it's on were incredibly noisy, since we only had one platform and the pallets were more spread out there was a combination of individual planking and cardboard flooring to make it safer. I added some heavy duty cardboard tubes leftover from Muggle Quidditch to give the top some extra support and there's a box acting a little like a chimney in the back to further support the roof. Having something to go inside was clearly very important to them with the tree house so I needed to maintain that.  

Once the pirate ship started getting worn out my coworker requested a fire truck. We decided to scale down with it and go to just one pallet. We uncovered some old foamcore displays and used a few pieces to make flooring. Since the firetruck is smaller only small children can stand on that part and falling through the pallet slats is alleviated by the foamcore. The pièce de résistance was an old plastic tray from some long ago platter that I cut a hole in the middle of and used a rivet to attach it a small box to act as a real spinning steering wheel for the firetruck. We ended up painting the firetruck red in a program and I have to say it really didn't help it. I've heard latex paint used for interior walls is really the best to use on cardboard. We used tempera and it just ended up very transparent and kind of rusty looking. It also dampened the cardboard a lot, cutting down on the clean lines. I moved on from this position before creating another structure, I hope someone else picked up the torch because the kids really loved playing in them. 

Farm in the Library

We are extremely lucky to have a magnet school in our community that focuses on urban farming. They've been great partners for programming, whether it was lending us cornstalks for a popcorn program or bringing in different experiences for our kiddos. Here are a few of my favorite farm encounters I've been a part of:

Grow, Eat, Grow!
For the summer reading theme year that focused on health and fitness we had an outreach person from the farm come with fresh veggies, picked that morning, and seeds. We tried zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, and carrots. I made some quick cheesy zucchini in the office toaster oven, just slice it in half length-wise, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cheese (I use parmesan for myself, mozzarella for the kids). We sat in a big circle and the kids got to hold different seeds, smell them, talk about them, and then examine the veggies. Many tried things their parents said they avoid at home. Most of the kids loved the cheesy zucchini. It was a really simple but effective program for kids of all ages.

Llama in the Library
This one wasn't with the high school, it was a local farmer that does school visits with her llamas. In the scheme of outside programs it was pretty economical and it's pretty eye-catching to have a llama in the second floor children's room. I didn't plan this one, my coworker organized it but I ended up being the one overseeing it on the day of.
A few details particularly exciting to me:
-the llama arrived in a minivan with the seats taken out, much easier to maneuver than a truck or trailer
-it wasn't used to be high up, so it spent most of the time staring out our windows at the unusual perspective of the outside
-it made this quiet humming-groaning noise the whole time
-llamas only spit at other llamas, never at humans

It was really friendly and in addition to a story, details on llama goods, passing around yarn and other items, the farmer let everyone pet the llama and take their pictures with it.

Year of the Rooster
We have these laminated cards we show the kids at class visits talking about the different kinds of programs we have. One has a picture of a chicken visiting the library. All the kids think it's awesome and from the beginning of my tenure I longed to have a chicken visit the library again. It took over a year to find just the right timing for the farm high school and the library. When I saw that this was the year of the rooster in the Chinese zodiac, I knew I had to have a rooster come to the library to celebrate the Lunar New Year. We have a high number of Chinese families that attend our programs. We had to shuffle things around last minute but managed to schedule the rooster for the last weekend of the New Year celebrations. My first question when booking the rooster was are roosters even ok to meet? Are they aggressive? I was told they can be but the one at the farm was great with kids. And was he ever! Hatched at a daycare in a nearby town that doesn't allow roosters, only hens, Gertie was used to being in a classroom setting. The outreach person from the farm talked a little about roosters and then answered a deluge of questions. Everyone got a chance to pet him and hold him if they wanted. He was very patient and beautiful.

We even had a local online news outlet there covering it. I gave out a handout with all of the Chinese Zodiac animals on it and everyone figured out there personal one. We decorated cartoon zodiac paper lanterns printed out on red paper, using pipe cleaners and gold pens, I did the cutting beforehand because it's unlucky to cut things during Lunar New Year. I had an artistic library assistant put some greetings in Chinese pictographs on the wipeboard for people to copy. It was a fun combination of animal and cultural programs.

3D Design and Printing: a New Chess Set

My undergraduate degree is in theater design, so I actually have training in CAD, including a quarter spent learning 3DViz, a professional 3D program that architects used at the time I learned it, which was not that recently. I find it really exciting that I get to pull from that knowledge now in teaching kids 3D printing on the junior version by the same company, Tinkercad. The library system had one small Makerbot Mini that had been given to us by a grant from a local company, specifically for kids programs. Embracing our library's 3D printer was one of the things that helped me get noticed and move rapidly from part time to full time. Traditionally the elementary services librarian at my library has been the one in charge of the 3D printer and having tech classes for kids, so I knew I needed to have something great as one of my first few months of programs in that position. Previously the library had done intro classes that consisted of designing a cup and more complicated ones creating a lamp. The intro classes I ran at my branch were the basics involved in designing a house or castle. With a robust chess club as another of my main regular duties I was inspired to have the kids work together in designing a new chess set.

Rather than just make this a Tinkercad how-to I decided to really teach them about the stages of design. I booked our tech classroom and registered kids, 9 total, with a caregiver, ages 5 to 12. I called everyone two days before, got across-the-board assurances they would come and then ended up with six kids. This is why I hate registration for programs. Anyways, six was a great number. The program was 90 minutes and I broke it up into several phases: Research, Brainstorm, Design, and Re-design.

Research
I started by showing them some images of ancient chess sets, the current standard set (called the Staunton chess set) and the images from Elgin marbles and architecture in London that inspired its designer in the 1800's in London. I talked about how the designer was inspired by his city. Then we took a look at some of the far-out designs for chess sets on Thingiverse.

Brainstorm
We brainstormed different visual themes for our board. Animals, fruits and tv characters made the board. I talked about the steps it takes to design complex pieces and suggested we try something a little more simple since it was most students' first attempts with Tinkercad. Since New Haven is known as Elm City and the town green is in front of the library I suggested trees as a theme. We then brainstormed some more for what each piece could be in our theme finally settling on:
Pawn- leaf
Rook- Tree Stump
Knight- Squirrel
Bishop- Christmas Tree
Queen- Birch Tree
King- Oak Tree

Design
Finally it was time to crack open Tinkercad. I showed them the basics. We divvied up the pieces, see, 6 was perfect! The kids went back to the research phase individually and looked at some pictures to help them come up with their design.Their designs were about as diverse as their age range. My plan had always been to tweak what they came up with to get our end set. 3/4s of the designs needed very few changes, two kids obviously sort of missed the boat on the concept. Many of the kids were incredibly creative, my favorite is the squirrel knight which has a 6 for a tail! Here are their designs:

Re-Design
We talked about how you don't just come up with one idea in design, toss the pieces on the workplane and it's perfect. Instead you come up with the idea and try and try and try until you find the pieces that work together best. I used my nametag as an example (it's a frame that the paper nametag that goes into our regular lanyard covers fits into), it took me several tries to get the owl right, I scrapped whole completed designs for it. We also talked about how the Makerbot Mini was created as a prototype machine, as it only uses a brittle plastic filament rather than making things out of hardier materials like metal. It's meant to test out ideas that you would then manufacture somewhere else.

I completed the main re-design of course, on my own over the next few weeks. I borrowed from Thingiverse for the rook and the king, mostly using a stump I found wholly designed for the rook but just using a more intricate oak leaf that I incorporated into a larger design for the king. I used the height for standard pieces from the chess entry on Wikipedia, even though this would never be a tournament set. I used the child's squirrel knight design with only the change of making it stand up to mimic the posture of the classic knight.

Here's the finished set, I'm pretty proud of it and the kids should be too:

Dinovember!

Inspired by the mischievous dinosaurs that visit the Tuma family in Novemeber, I threw a celebration of all things dinosaur. We made foam dinosaur foot covers, hatched dinosaur eggs, had a dinosaur count contest, and learned about how fossils are created with yummy pudding parfaits. This was my priciest program of the fall, about $60. We are fortunate to be down the street from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and this was the first time we took advantage of their Peabody on the Road program. They sent two volunteer docents and two large tables-worth of hands-on exhibits from the museum. Every time I was able to sneak into the main room where they were set up the table was packed. They have four kits to choose between and had just debuted the perfect one for my program: the evolution of birds into dinosaurs.

In our program room I had four activities for the kids:

Hatching Dinosaur Eggs
I got a bag of small plastic dinosaurs from Amazon and made about 30 eggs. After much inner debate about sand-coffe-ground-etc... and all of the many recipes I found on Pinterest, I went with a simple baking soda and water recipe. I can't find my notes for the ratio I ended up with, I think it was something like 2 cups of water to 1 1/3 cups of baking soda, but I tested it at home and it was different at work. I got two five-pound bags of baking soda at Target but I only used one. You just mix them together until you get a moldable consistency. I added some green food coloring to the water but it didn't come through strongly in the final eggs. The ones I made at home hardened nicely over about three days. The ones at work (where the heat is stronger and dryer) flaked as they hardened, which made them look scaly. The kids then used toy hammers and eye droppers with vinegar to break them apart and reveal the dinosaurs inside. This was messy but really fun.

Dino-feet
I got a big pack of colored foam from Michael's and made a couple of laminated templates. We bought some tiara and pirate hat kits from Oriental Trading in October and they have provided a huge wealth of stick-on foam shapes from jewels to geometric shapes to letters. The big trick to these I only figured out from viewing a number of blogs about making them is to have the back part of the dinofoot go under the shoe, many showed these as being pulled up so it was kind of a like a huge anklet but it's hard to get a hole that will go over a shoe. The template is pretty easy but you can find a printable one here

Fossil Dig
What's a big party without a snack? These are basically dirt cups with pudding and crushed graham cracker pieces (both chocolate and regular) and a few dino gummies (again from Amazon). I had a printout that talked about how sediment forms on top of dinosaur remains to make fossils. After much math and consternation in the pudding aisle of the grocery store I realized that the single-serve snack packs were cheaper than making up a bunch of the cold instant stuff, also worked better labor-wise and to accommodate whatever level of attendance we have (always hard to gauge at my library).

Dinosaurs on the brain
The last station was just a simple game. I have a glass head I bought from Pier One Imports a few years ago (something like $15 on sale) to hold my pro headphones I use for audiobook work (if they don't stay stretched they pinch my head). I've used it a few times at the library, for a how-many-LEGOS challenge and for a mad science display. It's nice because even smarty kids or parents who try to game the guessing game can't really work with the distortion provided by the glass. I put a bunch of medium sized vinyl dinosaurs from a story time kit inside along with my leftover small plastic ones, I think it ended up being 36. I had two kids guess the right number and they got a book that had been donated to the library about dinosaurs and a little glowing plastic fossil puzzle from the dollar tree.

Here's a link to a pdf of the signs for each station (except the dino-feet, it was pretty self-explanatory)