Hello! Sorry, summer was so crazy I almost had a breakdown, so I didn’t write. But Fall is quieter and really, much more fun, because I’m not on the verge of collapse.
So what am I doing?
Mad Scientists Club: This was originally pretty much borrowed wholesale from this wonderful library: https://cheshirelibraryscience.wordpress.com/, and I still use a lot of the themes and some of the ideas, but I’ve now got two years of online pandemic science under my belt, so I have a lot of ideas from books, zillions of websites, and my own homeschooled kid science memories. It’s awesome. I cram as many kids (currently 14) into a room as I safely can, we have a theme, and we do 3-5 different experiments tied to that theme. The themes are either material (balloons, candy) or concept (magnetism, energy) based. If the former, I explain the scientific stuff before each individual experiment, if the latter, we have an intro with some explanation and a cute video. We all wear lab coats, we make a giant mess, and it’s so much fun. So far we’ve done Balance and Candy.
Song and Dance Time: This is a long-time favourite of mine since I got a manager who will let us play recorded music in programs (five years ago, I believe). I am a fairly serious vocalist, so sometimes we do some real music stuff, but sometimes we just dance and clap and bang along with 20-30 minutes of songs. Laurie Berkner and Jim Gill are my primary go-tos, but I mix it up with a lot of other things, Putamayo kids stuff, hip-hop for kids, almost always Baby Shark, and occasionally even some of the Brazilian stuff I grew up dancing to, since my mom spent her teen and young adult hood in Brazil when Bossa Nova was king (and it’s great dance music).
3D Printing for Kids: I am a huge nerd for 3D printing, in exactly the way kids are. I don’t really have any ideas for what it’s good for (although earrings is definitely one), I just think it’s sooo cool! And we have had a million 3D printers over the years (since 2014, I think), but I’m the only person willing to teach kids about it. So what do we do? Well, it’s a 2-hour class, one hour a week over two weeks. First week we mostly talk about how it works and explore Thingiverse and the concept of CAD, and they all pick something small for us to print for them. During the in-between time we print the things, and have them ready to be picked up for week 2. Week 2 is a dive into CAD design using TinkerCAD (and yes, you will want to pull your hair out after you’ve done this, but I only do it once per season so that’s okay), and we get out the 3D pens if we have time and enjoy them. I only do this for ages 8+, I find you must have kids with good computer skills to do the CAD part, and no one younger really does, not keyboarding and mouse/touchpad, which is what you need for our devices.
I also do other storytimes as needed (which it is, a lot, and I’m one of only two all-rounders–comfortable doing anything for kids), but I’m looking forward to more things come winter!
Story Time and other exciting things 