Butterfly Release Event!

A few weeks ago one of the library staff members asked me if we wanted a monarch caterpillar to raise in the library. I said yes! I thought it would be really fun and cool for the kids to get to see the stages, and I figured we could have a fun release event when it turned into a butterfly!

We actually had the little butterfly house leftover from years ago too, so it was perfect! This is what the setup looked like:

The kids LOVED it. I will 100% do this again in future years. They were always so psyched to come in and see whether the butterfly had moved on to its next life stage. I had tons of kids enter the “Name the Butterfly Contest”. It was my intention to have the library staff pick their favorite, but when I narrowed it down to the final 4, I just couldn’t choose. So I decided to hold off and let the kids who came to the release event after school to vote on the names! (More on that below).

I manged to not get a photo of the butterfly as a full chrysalis (despite her being like that for almost two weeks #LibrarianFail) but here is a photo of her as a caterpillar, JUST hanging to begin her chrysalis, and as a butterfly!

We had a second grade class in the library when the chrysalis hatched. Of course, I was on an errand in the school and I missed it. 😦 BUT I was SO glad that there were kids in here to see it happen! This whole time I was so nervous that she would hatch overnight and we wouldn’t be around to see it.

That was on Thursday Aug 29. The way I went about this program, was to advertise it for “the first week of September” and have people sign up, and then call them with the specifics when the butterfly hatched. This was a little earlier than I anticipated, but my actual problem was that Monday Sept 2 was Labor Day, so there was no school and the library was closed. In order to not keep the butterfly captive for the long weekend, the program HAD to be scheduled for the next day, Friday Aug 30.

So! On Thursday after school I called all the parents and let them know, and got started planning a program I thought I was going to have more time on!

We had 16 kiddos at this program, which was honestly phenomenal for such a last minute thing. We did two butterfly crafts and then we had our release event! First thing, I had them vote on a butterfly name. The options were:

• Cheeto
• Goldfish
• Venom
• Moose

Cheeto was the winner! (Name courtesy of some 3rd grade girls.)

Okay if you follow me blog posts you should know by now that I am a chronic mistake maker. Its how you learn! So, my mistake with this one was planning two crafts that were actually both really hard. It’s hard for me as an adult (and a crafty person) to gauge how difficult a craft really is sometimes, and this was one of those times! haha Here are the two crafts!

The first craft was a Butterfly Life Cycle Paper Toy. I thought this was SO fun and cool, and the kids did too but it turns out that folding so precisely was difficult for most of them.

So it’s find of like origami and when they turn the paper, the different stages of the butterfly’s life come together. So cool! But so hard haha I ended up folding a lot of them and especially taping them together at the end. Here are some photos of the kids doing them.

Our second craft was based on this butterfly craft. We printed half a butterfly on a sheet of orange paper and had the kids fold it in half to make sure the wings were symmetrical. After that, we had them cut veins in it, sort of like you would with a paper snowflake. That part was VERY confusing for several of the littler ones, and what made this one so difficult. Some butterflies had more lines than others, but that’s okay! They are all unique! Once they figured that part out, they glued their orange part onto a black piece of paper, and then cut the black paper to match the orange shape. After all that, they were given a paintbrush and some white paint, to give the butterfly some white dots around its edges. Here are some photos of the kiddos doing this craft:

We had to hurry through this craft so that we could do our release!! I am unable to add videos to this blog, but here is a link to the Facebook post about the program! There, you can see a video of the release event.

This one was a ton of fun and we will absolutely do it again!

Super Spy Program

 

Program date: 5/16/19

I found some really cool spy crafts on Pinterest so I decided to go for it! I’ve had some kiddos super into spy books so I figured this would be a good program. I was right and the kids had a great time!

We did three crafts, all from Pinterest. I will link to them as I describe them below!

Super Spy Name Tags

You can see the basic idea here, but I actually designed my own sheets of name tags. They look like this:

Our agents’ first mission was to choose a super secret code name. I printed out some examples of those “the first letter of your first name + the last letter of your last name = your spy name” pages for reference, but I told the kids they could pick any name they wanted. My code name was Flash Danger!

After they chose their names, we fingerprinted them. There is a box for each finger above, so they had to wash their whole hand afterwards.

After that we ran yarn through the holes I pre-poked in the nametags so we could wear them!

Secret Code Maker

The link provides a download for the secret code maker printable! The kids got two pages, one with the letters and one with the symbols. I gave them some time to decorate each piece, and then they cut them out and we used a brad to hook them together. I printed out the  message sheet (also available in the link) so the kids could write a secret code. There was a section on the sheet that said “to read this message, line __ up with __”. I explained the importance in lining up one letter to one symbol and writing that in, so that another person would be able to decode their message. Then they wrote out the symbols!

This was a little theoretical for some of them but they got the hang of it!

Our last craft was a little rough. I have done something similar before (but a little more professionally done) and it was PERFECT but DIYing it didn’t work out well.

Secret Message Writing 

To do this activity, you start with a blue crayon, and write a message lightly on white paper. I had the kids all write “hello” because we were running short on time. After that, using a red pen and yellow highlighter, make cross hatches and scribbles over the message. Because the three types of writing utensils are different, they won’t combine, but it should make the blue message hard to see. Then using red acetate, you should be able to see only the blue message! Like I said, this one wasn’t great.

I did this on a printer for our Escape From Dr. Frankenstein’s Library program, printing a message in light blue, and then random letters in red, yellow, and orange in all different directions over the design to hide the blue, and it worked PERFECTLY. For reference, I would totally do it that way again.

 

 

Library Jeopardy!

Program date: 5/09/19

This one went WAY better than I expected, but I have to admit, several of the kids said “What’s jeopardy?” when they came in and sat down. (Fail). BUT they had so much fun once they figured it out!

I ran this a little more like classroom review Jeopardy (please tell me you guys also did that in middle/high school!) so we split the kids into two teams. I tried to do it evenly by grade level, so that I didn’t have 3 fifth graders on 1 team and 7 kindergartners on the other. It was pretty even! I had a few kids come in late so we had to distribute them but overall that part went really well.

We explained to them from the very beginning that they were working as a TEAM, so they had to decide which question to pick TOGETHER and that their answer had to be written on a dry erase board and agreed upon by the WHOLE team to count.

I also ran this 100% not like Jeopardy, in that each team could get points for any question, if they both got the right answer. I didn’t have buzzers (nor did I think that buzzers would be a wise choice) so we did it this way instead!

Here is a picture of the Jeopardy Board:

 I found a random old moveable chalkboard in the gym closet, so I borrowed it and taped up my categories! The actual question is underneath the dollar amounts. When the teams decided on a question together, the other librarian pulled off the dollar amount and read the question. We gave them a minute to discuss (quietly) and write down their answers. Then we had one team at a time read their answer. I kept track of points. Here are my teams:

It was honestly hilarious because they immediately got on a streak of answering the same thing. Which was great when it was the right answer! But not great when I asked them to come up with a team name and they both put “Comets” (our school mascot). They continued to answer the same thing throughout the game, even some wrong answers. It was pretty funny, especially because from where I was sitting no team was eavesdropping on the other. They must’ve been on the same brainwave!

As you can see above, my categories were Books, Weird Body Facts, Animal Facts, Movies and T.V, and my one random Bonus question. The questions and answers are as follows:

Category: Books 

$200: Who wrote the book The Cat in the Hat?

Dr. Seuss

$400: How many magic treehouse books are there?

55

$600: What does the “B.” stand for in Junie B. Jones?

Beatrice

$800: What was the name of the young boy in a Roald Dahl book about a chocolate factory?

Charlie Bucket

$1,000: Which famous children’s author’s real name is Theodore Geisel?

Dr. Seuss

Category: Weird Body Facts

$200: What is the normal body temperature for most humans?

98.6 degrees Fahrenheit

$400: What part of your body contains the smallest bones?

Ear

$600: What body part (other than our fingers) has a unique print?

Tongue

$800: How many miles per hour does a sneeze travel?

100 mph or more!

$1,000: What is the largest muscle in the body?

Gluteus Maximus

Category: Animal Facts

$200: What is the largest animal in the world?

Blue Whale

$400: Name one animal who can sleep standing up.

Horse, zebra, elephant, cow, flamingo

$600: What animal produces the biggest eggs in the world?

Sharks

$800: How many hours a day does the average sloth sleep?

20

$1,000: What is a group of dolphins called?

A pod

Category: Movies and TV

$200: In the movie ‘The Little Mermaid’ what is Ariel’s little fish friend’s name?

Flounder

$400: Arendelle is the name of the kingdom in which film?

Frozen

$600: What kind of animal was Abu in Aladdin?

A monkey

$800: What are the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, and Leonardo

$1,000: What kids TV show has been on the air the longest?

Sesame Street

Category: Random

BONUS $1,000: How many books do we have in the library?

19,645

(The closest guess on this one without going over is the winner)

I should not have given the points to the closest guess because they both were SO low. It was hilarious. They asked me what would happen if they guessed the exact right number and I told them I would get in my car right then and come back with a pizza for the team. That hyped them up REALLY hard even though it was so statistically improbable. It was really funny.

In the end, the team who had been behind came back and won! As their prize, they were allowed to pick something out of the treasure box (filled with small past summer reading prizes, tattoos, bouncy balls, etc).

I will 100% do this program again because the kids had a blast and it was very low-prep and they learned some cool facts! It was a win for everyone!

 

Origami

Program date: 5/1/19

In the fall, I couldn’t keep origami books on the shelf. So in January when we started talking about programming for the spring, I decided an origami program would probably go over really well!

This was a PTO program as well, so we were pretty well attended. The kids got to make a few different projects and some of them were really cool and different!

I had a few adult helpers for this one, because I wanted to have a person at each station. A couple of them were staff, and a couple were volunteers. It worked out really well! I’m going to go through project by project and post the instructions and also pictures of the kids making the projects.

Fortune Teller

Origami Fortune Tellers:

1. Lay your paper flat on the table and fold one corner straight up to meet the opposite corner
2. Unfold it so it is flat again, but you have a crease across the middle
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with the other two corners of the square
4. Your paper should be unfolded, but should have two creases in it in an “X” across the square
5. One by one, take the corners and fold them into the center where the creases cross
6. Flip the paper over, leaving those edges folded down
7. Now fold the corners in to the center again
8. Bring each corner in and fold towards the middle (as per bottom right photo).

Ring

Bookmark

1. Start by turning your paper upside down like a diamond.
2. Fold bottom point up to meet top corner.
3. Fold right point up to the middle point.
4. Fold left point up to the middle point.
5. Unfold both end points.
6. Fold one half of middle point down to the bottom edge.
7. Fold the right point back up to the middle point.
8. Then tuck the end underneath the fold.
9. Fold the left point back up to the middle point.
10. Then tuck the end underneath the fold.

Animal

I don’t have exact copies of the instructions for this station because our wonderful speech teacher volunteered to come up with ideas and run the table herself. I know she did cranes and frogs, so I am going to add a link to Pinterest instructions, but I am not 100% certain of the steps she took with the kiddos.

Origami Crane

Origami Frog

 

As it turns out, a lot of my photos are overlaps of different projects, and you can see several examples in each, so I am going to post them all below:

Library Lab

Program date: 4/11/19

There are SO many cool science projects on Pinterest right now, and kids LOVE science! We’ve done Library Lab a few times in the last two years, and I always try to look for projects that are different, because a lot of the time, the same kids come to each program.

I always write out a script for this one that tells me what materials we need, all the steps to go through, and the science behind the project. I am going to paste that script for each experiment here, with photos of the kids to break up the reading!

**I always start out this program by explaining to the kids that science is not something that will work 100% of the time. The cool thing about science is that you can try different ways to do things and see what works best! (Some of our experiments actually didn’t work the way they were supposed to so I am glad I led with this!)**

Invisible Ink

Materials

• 1/4 cup of baking soda
• 1/4 cup of warm water
• Grape juice
• Cotton swabs
• White paper
• Paintbrush

The Experiment

1. Mix together 1/4 cup of baking soda with 1/4 cup of water. Using warm water will help dissolve the baking soda a little better.
2. Use a cotton swab to write your message in invisible ink on a piece of white paper.
3. Wait thirty minutes for the invisible ink to dry.
4. Dip a paintbrush into some grape juice and paint over your message. The previously invisible message will appear!

The Science

The baking soda, water mixture being on the paper makes the grape juice react a little differently than it does with plain paper, allowing the letters to be seen!

You Can See Sound

Materials

• Large Bowl
• Plastic Wrap
• 1 teaspoon Uncooked Rice
• Metal Pan (Cookie Sheets or Pans are good options, but they must be metal)
• Metal Spoon

The Experiment

1. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and wrap it VERY tightly.
2. Pour the rice onto the plastic wrap.
3. Hold the metal pan in the air and position it next to the bowl.
4. Bang on the metal pan like a drum and watch what happens to the rice!

The Science

The rice moves and jumps around because of the sound waves that are caused when the spoon hits the pan. These sound waves travel through the air and when then reach the plastic wrap it vibrates causing the rice to move. The sound waves are also what allow us to hear the noise of the spoon hitting the pan.

I didn’t get any photos of this project because I was holding the metal pan!

Magic Sand

Materials

• colored sand
• fabric protector spray (I used Scotch Gard)
• large vase or bowl of water
• shallow container
• wax paper or tin foil
• spoon

The Experiment

1. Begin by lining your shallow container (or cookie sheet) with wax paper or tin foil. Spread the colored sand onto it. In a well-ventilated area, spray a heavy coat of fabric protector spray onto the sand.
2. After 10 minutes or so, stir the sand around and spray another coat onto it. Make sure all the sand is coated. You can repeat this again if you feel like the sand needs more.
3. After the sand is dry (about 1 hour), pour the colored sand into containers. Fill another container with water. We used a wide mouth vase for this.
4. Then simply pour the colored sand into the water. Watch how the sand clumps together when it hits the water.

The Science

Spraying the sand with the Scotch Gard makes it waterproof! So when it is introduced to water, is clumps together to try to keep the water from totally surrounding it.

This one didn’t work the way it was supposed to! I did buy sand from JoAnn and it was a little heavier than normal sand, so that is what I am blaming it on. I apparently didn’t get any photos of this one either!! Apologies readers!

Unpoppable Balloon

Materials

• Balloon
• Skewer
• Dish soap

The Experiment

1. Rub the dish soap on the skewer
2. Blow up the balloon (about medium size, not all the way!)
3. Pierce the balloon through the bottom and top where the rubber is thickest, and then push the skewer slowly but firmly into the balloon.

The Science

Balloons are made up from long chains of molecules called polymers, which are elastic enough to allow the balloon to stretch. A balloon is made up of molecule chains called polymers. The dish soap reduces surface tension on the balloon helping the skewer pierce it.

The polymer chains of the balloon close around the skewer which stops the air escaping and allows the balloon to stay inflated.

Several of the kiddos put their hands over their ears because they were just CONVINCED the balloon as going to pop! 

Fingerprint balloon

Materials

• White balloons
• Ink pad
• Thumb

The Experiment

1. Put your thumb on the ink pad firmly, making sure to get ink on the whole pad of your thumb
2. Press it down firmly but not too hard onto the white balloon
3. Wait a few minutes to allow the ink to dry a little
4. Blow up the balloon to see your inflated fingerprint

The Science

Your fingerprint is normal sized when you first stamp it on the balloon, but blowing up the balloon after that stretches it out and makes it bigger and easier to see, kind of like a magnifying glass!

I apparently didn’t get any photos of these guys blown up but they were really cool!

Oobleck

Materials

• Water
• Corn Starch
• Bowl

The Experiment

Mix one heaping cup of corn starch with 1/2 cup of water (we had to add a little more water) and mix. (repeat in that increment until you have desired amount)

Try to slowly put your finger into the mixture. What happens?

Now try to punch the mixture hard with your whole fist. What happens?

The Science

The substance formed is called a non-Newtonian fluid and it doesn’t behave as most fluids do. As you apply pressure to it, it hardens and when you let it sit it turns back into a liquid.

Dry Erase Floating Ink

Materials

• EXPO Dry Erase Markers
• dinner plate or baking dish
• jug of water

The Experiment

1. Test your markers to make sure the ink flows well.
2. Draw various shapes, stick figures or letters on your plate or baking dish.
3. Pour water into the dish, close to the edges of your drawings.

The Science

The science that makes dry erase markers able to be erased easily ALSO makes the ink insoluble, which means it can’t be dissolved in water! When water is poured over the ink, it becomes buoyant (able to float) and will unstick from the plates!

This one was also a little bit of a fail. I am not sure why because it worked SO well on Pinterest (Duh right?) I’m not sure what the problem with this one was but when I added the water the marker did not lift off of the plates.

I don’t have another one of these planned for this semester, but when I plan another one I will come up with new experiments!

 

Slime Time

Program date: 4/10/19

One of the most important things I have learned in children’s librarianship is: every mess can be cleaned up. Slime is one of the messiest things I have ever done in the library. It is also by far the most consistently successful after school programs we have ever done. The first time I did slime in the library (Jan 2018), I had 58 kids show up. About 30 registered, so it was absolutely crazy. I only have 28 chairs around tables in the program area, so we moved every extra chair over. We still didn’t have enough, so I pulled down all of the front facing books on top of the lowest shelf, and tossed a table cloth over the row of shelves. (Insert shrug emoji here) Sometimes you have to do what your community LOVES even if things get a little crazy. And even if you end up picking slime out of the carpet AND your jeans.

When we do slime, we set a table up in the story pit with all of the ingredients. I generally try to get 2 people to help, so that we can dish out ingredients as kids essentially go down the line, buffet style. I found a recipe for slime on Pinterest, and I halved it to save $ and to make sure that each kid didn’t come home with a TON of slime. I didn’t think their parents would appreciate that too much. This time, I had 36 kids. Still more chairs than I have at the tables, but it was a lot more manageable than the first time!

Here’s the recipe I used:

 1/4 cup Elmer’s glue

3/4 cup Shaving Cream

1 1/4 tbs Contact solution

A couple of drops of food coloring

This is the halved recipe. The full one is in the above Pinterest link.

As the kids came in we gave them a ziploc bag and a sharpie to write their name in it. This was for their slime when it was totally finished. I called tables one at a time to come up to the ingredients table. They picked up a Styrofoam bowl and a wooden craft stick (one of the thicker ones, for mixing). As they went down the line, the staff members dished out the right increments of materials, and the kids took their bowl back to their seat.

Dishing out materials takes a long time, so sometimes the kids who go first have their slime all the way done by the time the last table gets called. I have not yet figured out a way to remedy this! After all of the kids have materials, I immediately go to them and help them stir. Some of them don’t quite grasp the concept of stirring until you are done (not just when you don’t want to stir anymore) and some only stir the top level so the glue all sits on the bottom and doesn’t get mixed in. A particular struggle this time was that the bowls were NOT big enough to hold all the materials, so they had HEAPING slime by the time they were done. It was everywhere and it was hilarious.

When their slime was almost all set (not sticking to the side of the bowl), I had them dig it out with their hands and squish it up that way for awhile. Once it was totally set (not sticky at all) they could play with it until it was time to go, then they put it in their ziploc and we were all done!

Some of their slimes turned out SO great! Here are a couple of the best ones:

 

**Quick tip for getting slime out of clothing is to freeze it with ice and then pick it off. Here’s a just-for-fun picture of me freezing slime on my jeans so I can clean them off. Like I said in the beginning, every mess can be cleaned up.

DIY Robots

Program Date: 3/21/19

This program was scheduled for early January but we had a snow day and I had to cancel! It was late March by the time we were able to make it up, but it was such a fun program.

Kids LOVE robots, and I looked really hard for a couple of robots that they could DIY easily (and without a soldering iron). I ended up with two types of robots: a little guy who has light up eyes, and a scribbling robot!

I am going to go one robot at a time, and outline how we made them.

**(This combination worked out SO well because the first robot used the bristly part of an electric toothbrush, and the second one used the handle/motor part. I couldn’t have planned it any better honestly.)**

DIY Light Up Robot Bugs

The link for these cute little guys is here. In the end, they look like this:

I needed quite a few materials for this one:

Electric toothbrush tops (normal toothbrushes will be cheaper if you are not doing the scribble bot also. But if you are, buy the electric toothbrushes for that one and just use the tops for this bot. Super easy!)

LED Lights (I bought color changing ones!)

Coin 3V Batteries

Mobile phone coin motor

Tape

I diverted slightly from the original link instructions. I had the kids tape the black wire of the coin motor to the bottom (the side with no engraved info) of the 3V battery, and then tape the red wire to the top of the top of the battery. Some of the coin motors didn’t have much exposed wire on the end, so they had to be *really* particular and make sure that the exposed wire touched the battery directly. When you get it right, the robot will buzz ONCE, lightly. 

After that, we had them tape both the coin battery and the coin motor onto the toothbrush, bristles down. Once the battery and motor are secure, the LEDs slide easily around the battery if you don’t bend the wires. On LED lights like this, there is 1 wire prong that is *slightly* longer than the other. The longer side goes with the RED wire, and the shorter sides goes with the BLACK wire. If you get them backwards, the LED will not light up.

The kids were really thrilled with how their little guys turned out!

Scribble Bots

The link for these wacky robots is here. In the end, they look like this:

These guys were so cool but we struggled a little getting them exactly right. For this robot you will need:

Electric toothbrushes (You can leave them intact if you aren’t using the bristles for the light up robot from above) (I bought Meijer brand when they were on sale!)

Pool noodles sections

Thin markers (cheap ones because you will be giving them away)

Rubber bands

Duct tape

White paper (we used 11×14)

Google eyes (optional)

Permanent markers (optional)

Stickers (optional)

Pipe cleaners (optional)

The first step for this robot was handing out pool noodles and toothbrush handles! The toothbrush handles weren’t quite as wide as the pool noodle holes, so they slid right through. This is where the rubber bands came in! We had the kids wrap a couple of rubber bands around the thickest part of the handle, to make them a little wider and help them stay lodged in the noodle hole. This part was heavy on trial and error. If it was too *tight*, the vibration didn’t move the robot enough to make him scribble. But if it was too *loose*, the same thing happened. It was a very specific process and we had to try different combinations with different kids.

Once the toothbrush handle was secured inside the pool noodle, I let the kids pick out 3 marker colors. I chose browns when I made my example so the kids would have the best colors to pick from. We let them pick 1 marker at a time, and went around the tables 3 times so it was fair.

The next step was duct taping the markers to the pool noodle, cap side down. This was another error-full step. I assumed that the markers being level would be the best, so the robot didn’t tip over. After experimenting over and over with one little girl’s robot, we discovered that one marker being *slightly* longer than the rest made it off balance *just* enough to make the vibration actually move the robot.

After that they could decorate their robots. We gave them google eyes and pipe cleaners and stickers and markers and let them decorate their robot however they wanted!

After the decorating, we turned the toothbrushes on and watched the robots scribble! A few worked WAY better than others, and there are so many variables it was hard to figure out why. We did our best! But the kiddos had fun watching the robots move around and mark up their paper!

I apparently was too busy troubleshooting to get photos of the actual building process but here are some after photos!

I am SO glad we were able to find time in the schedule to make this program up because it was so cool and the kids loved it!