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Monthly Archives: June 2018

Animals in the Park!

2018-06-26T03:49:54-06:00

Summer Reading programs in the park have begun again for the year. So how to inform and entertain a variety of ages, in an outdoor setting? Animals! The theme for the second week was animals, and the first of the Tuesday/Thursday programs featured a live animal petting zoo. Well over 250 people showed up for that! We had two baby goats, two young sheep, a little pot-bellied pig, and a rabbit, all of whom seemed to actually enjoy the attention. Sunrock Farm, a local educational farm (https://www.sunrockfarm.org/), hand-raises the animals destined for both in-farm and outreach education, and they are used [...]

Animals in the Park!2018-06-26T03:49:54-06:00

Light and Color and Uncooperative Weather

2018-06-19T04:05:06-06:00

The best-laid plans often go awry...  so how to program on the fly for a large group when that happens? My Monday Mayhem program is attended by a lot of school-age kids, including those who attend two separate day care summer camps. Planning for 80 takes some work and means that it is difficult to change activities without some advance thought and materials-gathering. As such, I learned a valuable lesson last week about planning... always have a back-up if the activities rely on the sun. The theme for the program last week was Light and Color, and while I had a [...]

Light and Color and Uncooperative Weather2018-06-19T04:05:06-06:00

Exploring Civil Engineering

2018-06-10T21:25:18-06:00

This summer our STEAM space, the BOOMbox, is exploring engineering. We’re focusing on a different field of engineering every two weeks to help kids understand the breadth and overlap of this STEAM topic. While the BOOMbox offers drop-in experiences, our Be the Scientist program series for grades 3-5 provided a more structured exploration of civil engineering, specifically looking at bike paths in Skokie. Here’s what we did. We began with a short slide presentation to start discussion about what engineering is and why it is valuable. We also reviewed the seven steps of engineering design from Engineered! Engineering Design at Work [...]

Exploring Civil Engineering2018-06-10T21:25:18-06:00
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