May | 2017 | yogibrarian

Our library’s Summer Reading Program has transformed this year into the Summer Adventure Program. We held a kick off event today for all ages. We had a “Build a Birdfeeder” station, a “Build an Edible Necklace” station, a “Build a Pinwheel” station, and an inflatable planetarium (which we hired).

However, I wanted to focus on the Build Your Own Playground station. Pop-up Playgrounds are popping up (pun intended) all over. I recently saw a bunch of examples at the Interactivity conference earlier this month, and we had heard about one in Denver even before that. Simply put, a pop-up playground is a place where children are free to use the materials provided in whatever manner they choose. We provided boxes, wheels, tires, tubes, bubble, wrap, and tape and then let the kids run free. While this event was for all ages, and not just the under 5 crowd I normally work with, this type of event would work for all ages, as long as the supplies were appropriate. Remember to have lots of tape!!!

They made a tire swing, rocket ships, houses, tipis, robots, and more! And check out the evolution of this kid’s car!

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This month we held an outer space event at the library twice (Tues and Sat mornings) and at an outreach event (Thursday morning). May is sadly a notoriously slow month attendance-wise, but those who came had a BLAST.

We charted our own constellations like this post.

We tied sponges to our feet and walked on the moon in our space shoes.

We made rockets that blasted off into space. I modified this post because I didn’t have plastic pipettes. We simply colored 2 rockets and then taped them together leaving a hole at the bottom for the straw. Make sure to tape the rockets together, leaving no holes for air to escape through.