Marshmallow Challenge

 

Last year at the PLA Conference in Indianapolis, I watched a group of librarians take part in the Marshmallow Challenge.  It was so awesome that I knew that it could be a whole program at my library.  Today was that day!

Supplies 
To run your own Marshmallow Challenge, you will need:

• 20 pieces of spaghetti per participant or team (2 oz. of spaghetti=60 pieces)
• 1 yard of string
• 1 yard of masking tape
• 1 marshmallow

 My total cost for this program was $3 as I had string (well, yarn) and masking tape on hand.
 
Registration & Set-up
We preregistered 20 7-12 year olds as that is what our Activity Room could hold.  I made sure to roll up the carpet (because marshmallow does not easily come out of carpet!).  Since we are low on staff this week, I prepped each set of supplies ahead of time.  I put the marshmallows in at the last minute so that they didn't get stale.

I also measured out the masking tape right before the program and hung it off of our cabinets.

The Program
At the beginning of the program, I went over our rules:

• The challenge lasts 18 minutes.
• You can work together, but can only use 1 set of supplies.
• The paper bag does not count as a supply.
• The tallest freestanding structure at the end of 18 minutes is the winner.

I passed out the supplies and called out "GO!" as I started my stopwatch app on my phone.  I called out various times with how much time was left.  As the kids were having so much fun, some of the adults wanted to play too.  I had a few extra kits so they started their own challenge.

Our tallest structure ended up being 29 inches.  We talked about how all of the tall structures built had good bases to support the height.  The kids even cleaned up afterwards!

As parents left, they were raving about the program and planning their own Marshmallow Challenges.  I gave them the idea that they could also build structures with mini marshmallows and spaghetti noodles and it was like a light bulb went off in their heads.

We're already planning on when we could do the program again!

Candy Science

The kids around here are all on Winter Break this week so we have been hosting various activities to keep them busy.  Today's Candy Science program worked well with my budget as most of the candy was on clearance from Valentine's Day (Pop Rocks and Sprite were the only nondiscounted items).  All of the experiments except 1 were from the books Candy Experiments and Candy Experiments 2 by Loralee Leavitt.

We registered 20 kids, ages 7-12, for this program as this is what our Activity Room will hold.  There was a lot of interest and if we had extra staff to cover the reference desk, we could have easily run 3 sessions of this program.  It would help if you had a volunteer to help with getting extra cups out on the tables and used cups emptied out.  I just tagged some of our regular parents to help out (and really, they loved being a part of the program!).

Since I was the only staff member in the room, my goal was to have as much of the supplies out on the table at the beginning as possible.  Our tables seat four so I set the experiments up so kids would work as either a pair (on one side of the table) or as a group of 4.  This is what our tables looked like:

Experiment 1-Floating Letters
I started with this experiment as you want to let it sit for a couple of minutes.  The kids added their M&Ms to their cup of warm water.  We put it aside and went onto experiment 2, then came back to check our results.  We had quite a few floating M's on the surface of the water.

Experiment 2-Bobbing Hearts
The kids added their Conversation Hearts to their cup of Sprite.  The hearts started bobbing up and down right away.  We talked about how Sprite is carbonated and uses carbon dioxide.  This carbon dioxide lifts the candy hearts and as the bubbles pop, the hearts drop to the bottom of the glass.

Experiment 3-Floating/Sinking Candy Bars
We started off by talking about what a hypothesis is and made guesses as to whether each mini candy bar would float or sink.  Each kid would raise their hand as we guessed so I could count them and we displayed our guesses at the front of the room.

The kids then tested their guesses as they floated the mini candy bars (Twix, Snickers, Milky Way, Milky Way, and 3 Musketeers) in glasses of water.  Note-we have a lot of peanut allergies in our area so 2 tables did not use Snickers.  They got to try the special Milky Way Dark bars. 

If you haven't tried this experiment before, all of our candy bars sank except the 3 Musketeers.  We talked about the ingredients and how the Twix, Milky Way, and Snickers all had ingredients that were heavier than water (nuts, caramel, etc.).  The middle of the 3 Musketeers has a lot of air, which makes it lighter than water and will float.  We then talked about other food items, such as marshmallows, that would float as they are made up mostly of air.

Experiment 4-Disappearing Twizzlers
I filled disposable plastic cups with vegetable oil and passed out whole red Twizzlers.  I originally tried to break the Twizzlers in half due to the cup size, but that makes it hard for the experiment to work.  We talked about reflections in water and how images are distorted.  Then we added our Twizzlers to the glass and they could watch the Twizzlers bend in the oil.  Finally, I had them try to make the licorice disappear.  While they did this, I was able to get water out for the next experiment.  Most everybody had figured out the trick of turning the glass while the licorice is at the side by the time I had finished passing out new water.

Experiment 5-Sour Candy Bubble Test
We started by talking about acids and bases.  If you combine the two, you will get a chemical reaction.  We guessed that our Sour Patch Kids would have acid in them because they are sour so we put some in our new glass of water.  I walked around and added a spoonful of baking soda (base) to every cup and we watched the bubbles appear.  This proved that our candy was an acid.

Experiment 6-Pop Rocks Expander
For this experiment, you need Pop Rocks, Sprite, and a balloon.  Since I talked fast through the previous experiments, I had the kids add the Pop Rocks to the balloon without funnels to take up a little bit of time.  This way, they all got a turn to try and pour.  We added our balloons to the tops of our Sprite (20 oz. bottles) and tipped the Pop Rocks into the Sprite.  As the balloons expanded, we talked about how both Pop Rocks and Sprite have carbon dioxide in them.  In fact, Pop Rocks even list carbon dioxide as an ingredient.  The carbon dioxide from both ingredients makes the balloon inflate.

The overall program took about 40 minutes, but I also talk fast.  Since I had leftover candy, each kid who wanted (and whose parents would let them) could come up and get some of the leftover candy.  The kids all left happy and cleared out all of our food and candy experiment books from my display.

Flannel Friday-Leaves

This is another of my monthly flannelboards in our Activity Room.  I always hang a sign next to the board to give parents ideas of what to talk about.

Then I add in my flannelboard parts.  This month I have 9 leaves in 3 different colors and shapes.  There are a lot of matching opportunities.  Plus, since it is fall in Michigan, many of us have these leaves in these colors in our yards at home.

This week's Flannel Friday round-up is being hosted by Library Village!  Stop by for some great ideas.

If you want to know more about Flannel Friday:

• Check out the official Flannel Friday blog that includes schedules and other important information.
• Search for images and links on our Pinterest page.
• Discuss story time stuff (and other ys stuff) on the Flannel Friday Facebook page.
• Follow #flannelstorytime on Twitter.

Paper Roller Coasters

Last winter I found this awesome web site called PaperRollerCoasters.com and it screamed summer library program.  I bought the templates, set up the program, and was ready to go.  My original intention was for everybody to make their own roller coaster.  Then I started my sample and realized that there was no way anybody could finish a roller coaster on their own in 60 minutes.  This is when I decided that we were going to make group roller coasters and display them in the children's area.

Supplies and Cost

• Templates from PaperRollerCoasters.com-$19.95
• Foam board to support roller coasters-$17 (I bought 17 boards from the dollar store as I originally was going to register 17 kids.  You probably don't need 17, but I would have at least 2 per group.)
• Marbles-$1
• Card stock-I snuck this through on a supply order so it didn't come out of my budget.  You will need at least 2 reams of card stock for 17 kids.  I used 1 white ream for the support pieces and one colored ream for the actual coaster.
• Scotch tape-I had a bunch of rolls in our craft cupboard

My grand total for today's program was $37.95.

Registration
When I set the program up, I decided on 17 kids because that is how many sets of copies I could make of the roller coaster templates with 1 ream of paper.  This works well as a smaller group program.  If you have a lot of volunteers, you could easily have more kids participate.

The Program
I started the program off talking with the kids about roller coasters.  We talked about what their favorite roller coasters had (loops, drops, etc.), then talked about how to make something similar.  The big buzzwords for the program were "energy" and "motion".  I pulled sample pictures off of the PaperRollerCoasters.com web site and we looked at how those compared to pictures of real roller coasters.

The kids had naturally sorted themselves into three tables as they came into the room, so these were our three groups.  My only rule of the day was that this was a group project and everybody at the table could participate.  I had all of the parts sorted on tables and told the kids that they were welcome to come up and use what they needed.  I had preassembled a pile of pieces to get the kids going.  Since this was science, not everything that they tried was going to work and it is okay if it doesn't.

These kids had AWESOME ideas.   Two of the groups wanted an extra board for their base (which we attached with duct tape) and they put it in different places.  They even came up with the idea of a tunnel that they made out of the beams. To reemphasize the team effect, each group named their coaster and the creators added their names to a sign that is propped up on each display.  Here are our finished coasters:

Drop and Swirl

The Health Warning

Stealth Dragon

 
What I Would Do Differently
The one thing that I would do differently is to either make this a 120 minute program or an all-day, drop-in program.  These kids wanted to stay and play with their roller coasters and their parents were ready to leave.

Highlight of the Program
We had a group of 4 parents who stayed in the room to help as needed.  They thought that the program was excellent since it promoted team work (even among those brother/sister combos).  One parent even said, "Your programs are normally very good, but when are you doing this one again?  We loved it."

Mad Scientists-Paper Airplanes

For those who have never held a paper airplane making library program, I highly recommend it.  Plus, with the rise of STEAM programming, paper airplanes fit right in.  This is one of those low-prep, low-cost (I spent less than $10 on the program), and high interest programs.

When planning my program, I hit our stacks first.  There are a lot of unique paper airplane books.  My goal is to find one paper airplane that will fly really well and a few other unique airplanes that use different papers or materials.  I also save just about every cool pattern that I run across online as you will see below.

When I am by myself, I only want 20-25 7-12 year olds in a program.  This is all that I can realistically handle while teaching and still being able to give individual attention.  If you have more volunteers or put out stations with directions, you could possibly hold more people.  My other thought when deciding on the number of kids is safety.  Since one of the cool parts about making paper airplanes is FLYING paper airplanes, I didn't want us too squished that they would hit people.

As the kids come into the room, all of their supplies are in a packet on a table for them.  This way I don't need to spend time passing things out when we could be flying paper airplanes.  Today we made 5 different airplanes:

• Buzz Lightyear airplane printed on normal copy paper
• Full throttle airplane printed in color on normal copy paper
• Whirlybird template from Microsoft Publisher on blue copy paper
• Flying Squirrel using origami paper from Paper Airplanes: Flight School 1 by Christopher Harbo
• Glider from Sticky Note Paper Airplanes by Steven Schmidt

After all of our creations were completed, we had to test them out.  I set out targets from Family Fun and made 3 additional targets out of posterboard.

If you make the holes "clouds", then your circles don't need to be even.

Today's testing was unanimous.  The full throttle airplane was our best flyer.  Many of our participants were able to get it to fly through the "clouds" or across the room.

As the kids left, they cleared out my entire display of paper airplane books.  Additional holds were placed on titles from the handout that each child received.  

Peep Science

Being Spring Break in Michigan, today was a great day to hold one of our Mad Scientist programs.  Normally, I raid my favorite STEM librarian's blogs, but I actually had an idea for this one-Peep Science!  

For our program, we registered 20 kids ages 7-12.  I like to set my programs up as stations.  While this means that there is prep work, I can enjoy the program and ask fun questions instead of leading it.  As each kid came into the room, they got the handout, a pencil, and their yellow bunny Peep.

Supply List

• 2 2-liter bottles of Sprite
• Lots of Peeps in various colors
• 5 bags of mini marshmallows
• 5 boxes of spaghetti (probably only need 3 or so)
• Pencils
• Crayons in Peep colors and for color mixing
• 2 marshmallow mashers
• Handout
• Rulers
• Disposable bowls
• Ice cubes 

Station 1: Observation
I put out the rulers and yellow crayons.  The kids were asked the following:

• What does your Peep look like?  Draw it in the box on the handout.
• How big is your Peep?
• What does it feel like?

Station 2: The Freezer
I froze a box of Peeps for 1 day before the program.  I put the frozen Peeps in a bowl at a couple of spots along the table along with an ice cube.  Kids were asked the following:

• How do the Peeps at this station compare to your Peep?
• Are they the same size?
• What do they feel like?

Since most of us probably haven't frozen Peeps before, they really don't freeze.  They are cold and a little hard, but are still pretty spongy.  This is why I put the ice cubes out at the station too.  This gave us a starting point for talking about frozen things.

Station 3: The Masher
The original idea at this station was to put Peep bunny ears into the masher and watch them shrink.  I don't know why (but I suspect it is due to the sugar coating), but Peeps don't shrink in the masher.  Luckily we had mini marshmallows for another station and we used those instead.  If you put a mini marshmallow into the masher and pump it, it will get wrinkly and look similar to a raisin.  The kids were asked the following at this station:

• What happens to the Peep in the masher?
• Why do you think this happened?
• Draw your Peep in the masher.

My favorite question to ask at this station was, "If the marshmallow shrinks when we take all of the air out of it, what do you think one of the main ingredients in marshmallows are?"  From my personal past experience of making marshmallows at home, air is one of the key ingredients in marshmallows.  You have to run the mixture on your mixer for 20 minutes to add enough air.

Station 4: Color Mixing Peeps
For this station I cut a bunch of blue, pink, and yellow Peeps in half.  There were a number of bowls filled with Sprite and kids were asked to add two different colored Peeps to the bowls. I asked two questions at this station:

• What happens when you put two different colored peeps in a bowl of Sprite?
• What color combinations did you find?

This was a lot of fun and the kids really got into it.  Some of the really thoughtful kids would add two of one color and one of another to make the color even stronger.

blue + yellow = green

Station 5: Building with My Peeps

This station started off as a time filler, but this station could have been the whole program.  I put out spaghetti noodles and mini marshmallows and asked kids to build the tallest structure possible.  My only rule was that it had to stay steady for 10 seconds.  Here are some of the creations:

What I found really neat was that many of the families were going to the store after the program to pick up more spaghetti and marshmallows to build their own structures at home.

Wrap-Up

This program was a giant hit.  Whether they were measuring, building, or mixing, there were a lot of great conversations going on between the kids and the adults who stayed in the room.  I don't know if they were just really bored from Spring Break or what, but I got a couple of "This was the best program ever!"

After the Post
Peep science became such a big hit in libraryland online that we are declaring April 9, 2015 National Peep Science Day.

Mad Scientists-Catapults

Let me start off by saying that I am a non-science person.  I have been following various blogs and presentations to psych myself up and made the plunge this winter.  This goes to show you that if I can do it, you can too.

Before the program
I started off by giving any science program for ages 7-12 a catchy name-Mad Scientists.  The topics may change, but it will always show up as Mad Scientists in our newsletter and on our online calendar.  I do this to create a following.  (Our ages 3-6 programs are called Little Scientists.)

The idea came about as a combo from two sources-The Show Me Librarian's Attack on the Fort blog post and a presentation about STEM programs at MLA's 2013 Annual Conference.  In Lisa-speak, I mushed them together and added a twist to create a catapult program.  I booked our auditorium for this program as it has a large open space that was perfect for flying projectiles.  We registered 25 kids for a program during their midwinter break and filled up almost immediately.

Supplies
Cost is very important to me when deciding on a program.  This is was my list of supplies and the cost:

• 1 box of craft sticks for $8.99
• 1 bag of rubber bands that we had in the building to wrap holds.  Free
• 1 box of plastic spoons from Meijer for $1.99
• Bin of pom poms from our activity closet.  Free (already had)
• 1 roll of masking tape from our supply closet.  Free (already had)

The total cost was $10.98 which makes my cheap heart very happy.

The program
As the kids came in, they picked up their nametag (our way to check registration) and sat at one of the tables.  At each space was a handout with directions, 9 craft sticks, 1 plastic spoon, and 4 rubber bands.  This way I wasn't running around passing out supplies.

Almost everyone was able to make their own catapult.  I did have to help a few kids in making an X out of the rubber bands.

Now for the fun part-target practice!  I set up a bunch of masking tape targets around the room and piles of ammunition (pom poms).

 My bullseye that makes me think of skee-ball

My castle

Gotta have some Xs to mark the spot

Every 7 year old boy's favorite target

The kids spent the next 45 minutes shooting their catapults.  As they started sending pom poms flying, they came up with good scientific questions, such as "What is the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet?" and "Which works better-the big pom pom or the little pom pom?"  Some of the kids took their original catapults apart and experimented with different designs-one was a v, one had a lot of pom poms under the rubber bands, and another added more sticks to make his middle taller.  It was fun to see this science stuff in action.

The kids also got a bit creative.  They asked if they could have more targets.  I said okay as long as they told me the designs.  We ended up with:

Tic Tac Toe

It started off as a smiley face.  Then, it got angry eyebrows and a tongue.  

To me it looks like a cover of a Bon Jovi album.

With five minutes left in the program, I yelled out "Clean up time!"  The kids picked up all of the pom poms that were now scattered throughout the room.  Out of 25 kids, at least 20 spent an hour flinging things at targets.  I was amazed at their attention span.

Wrap-up

So I learned after I did it that my director is not fond of tape on oak paneling.  Luckily he didn't see it, but it is something to keep in mind for the future.  For now I am going with the philosophy of "don't ask, don't tell."

The size of the group worked really well with the size of my room.  The kids were able to spread out enough that they could each hit targets, but not so far that they would chase each other around the room with catapults.  You do need to keep an eye out in this type of program as they will begin to find other targets.  We ended up with pom poms hitting the clock, the garbage can, and people.  Two kids played catch with theirs where one kid would fling the pom pom and the other would catch it.  It was organized chaos so you have to know where your comfort level is and where you need to lay down the law (clock and garbage can were no's, but catch was okay).

Personally, I was surprised that it kept their interest for a full hour.  I was expecting kids to trickle out after 30 minutes, but that didn't happen.  It was definitely a program to do again in the future.

Flannel Friday-A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

There are those days when I am walking by one of our reshelving carts and a book sticks out as a great flannelboard addition.  A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea adapted by Jessica Law is one such book.  The title has a lot going for it that would make it a great addition to story time-bright illustrations, a cumulative and catchy song (with cd included), and it deals with science in a sneaky way.  How can you beat all that?  Plus, in honor of Shark Week, it includes a shark.

 We start off with a hole at the bottom of the sea.

Then, we add in some animals who live in the hole at the bottom of the sea-a shark, an eel, a squid, a crab, and a snail.  (In science terms, it is a food chain.)
 

 The sun feeds the weed, which feeds the snail...

 

As an added bonus, we throw in some number practice by counting the animals.

If I had unlimited time and money for felt, I would have created the animals so they would fit on top of each other in size order as they get eaten.  Instead, my animals are all cut out of felt with puffy painted details.  For the snail, I painted on orange glitter glue to make it shiny.  The numbers are cut with an AccuCut machine.

If I were performing this book, I would use the cd to sing the words and sing along with it.  This would add in the singing early literacy component.  Plus, I like using books in different ways than just reading them.  With my older kids I would pass out the felt parts for them to put on the boar as there are 13 of them.  With the 2 year olds, I would add the parts myself.

This week's Flannel Friday round-up is hosted by Brooke at Reading with Red.  Stop by to check out all of the flannel fun!