Maker Mondays Coming in 2019

-
This year's seventh graders were the first group to participate in a STEAM program that began in the fall of 2016 and has turned into one of the highlights of fifth grade. The program - Making and Tinkering in the Bitterroot - features visits from Nick Wethington, a making and tinkering wizard from spectrUM Discovery Area in Missoula. Until now, the program has been limited to fifth graders. But beginning in January, seventh graders will have a chance to revisit the ozobots, squishy circuits, and other great design activities that they experienced as fifth graders.

 Beginning mid-January, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders can sign up for Maker activities in the library during advisory, lunch, and recess. Because eighth graders are eligible to participate, they will finally get a chance to do some activities that were not available to them three years ago.

 The idea for providing some making and tinkering time came from watching some seventh graders trying out an activity using strawbees. With strawbees, designers use plastic connectors and straws to make bridges, towers, ferris wheels, clothing patterns, and more. 

The tools are simple, but the possibilities are endless. Here is what a few seventh graders did in just half an hour or so:


Maker days in the library will begin in mid January with a Strawbees building spree and continue every other week until spring break.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ask a Librarian: Answers You Won't Get From Google: Science Friday

-
Just about all of the questions for this week's post are science-related. That's only fitting, since just yesterday I watched my nephew defend his doctoral thesis during a Zoom presentation. His topic? "Lend me some sugar: how plysacharides and pleomorphism drive the dissemination of a fungal pathogen." I don't understand it, either. That fungal pathogen, by the way, is Cryptococcus neoformans. It will turn your brain into cottage cheese, basically, if you get it. The takeaway here is to beware of fungal pathogens. Just in case you were wondering. And thanks to Pam, my favorite sister, for helping me answer this week's questions so that I could go for a hike. The first question comes from "Unknown" in a reply to a recent blog post: "Do scientists like mutants?" Thanks for asking, "Unknown." You could have asked our nephew Steven; he's a real scientist.  (This question actually comes from my brother, who, contrary to what I use
Read more

Ask a Naturalist: Part 1

-
The "Ask a Librarian" questions were certainly fun for me to answer, and I will continue to respond to those questions from time to time. However, while working on a recent blog post ( Pandemic Librarian Gets Back to Nature ), it occurred to me that I could fill a need that all hikers have at some point. I am, of course, referring to how convenient it would be to have a botanist with me whenever I'm hiking. That way, I could ask him or her about the plants along the trail. I do have a couple of botanist friends, but they don't always answer right away when I send them texts with photos of some plant or another. I won't answer your questions right away, either - but like "Ask a Librarian," the answers to your questions to the natural world will not be ones you can find with any kind of Google search, or any other reputable database, for that matter. So, without further ado, here are the first questions. The first question comes from Eowyn, who ask
Read more

Ask a Librarian: Answers You Won't Get From Google: Odds and Ends

-
Some questions fell through the digital cracks and I am just now getting around to answering them. Sorry, folks - too much screen time for this librarian! Let's begin with James, who asked, " What is the weirdest place you've ever been? If you could would you go back?" For the longest time I thought that Columbus, Ohio was the strangest place I had ever been. No mountains, no Great Plains, and so much humidity that some summers I never felt completely dry. People there crazy about a football team, Ohio State, whose mascot is a buckeye, which is the name of a poisonous nut from the buckeye tree. On football Saturdays, many of the crazies in attendance wore necklaces made of buckeye candy, a lethal combination of milk chocolate and peanut butter that left people well on their way to a sugar crash. Now that I think of it, the whole Midwest is just weird. Consider the Big 10 Conference, which has 14 schools. Really. Universities  that apparently can't count. And the m
Read more