Caitlin Savage

What do you call a chicken who crosses the road, rolls around in the dirt, then comes back?* Alas, this particular joke went over the heads of every participant in this month’s STEAM Engines at Skokie Library, but it was the perfect entry into our discussion about dirt - or more specifically soil. Same thing, right? As it it turns out, there’s a difference, and if you ask a soil scientist, it’s pretty big! It was the beginning of summer, and I was getting excited about getting my hands dirty. What better opportunity than STEAM Engines, Skokie Library’s kindergarten-2nd grade science [...]

One of my favorite things about kid science programming at the library is the journey of discovery. I was as excited as the next curious citizen when the photo of the black hole was released in April. I was eager to show it to my son, who is generally fascinated by all things space, and I was not disappointed. “But mom,” he asked me, “what IS it?” and I found I couldn’t quite answer. Luckily for both of us, I’m a librarian, and that means one of my all-time favorite things to do is to find out. I decided to take [...]

We were at the tail end of what seemed to be an endless, capricious winter. One of those predictably unpredictable Illinois seasons where one day you wake up and the sun is shining, and the breeze is sweet, and the crocuses know better but just can’t help themselves. There’s something about that optimism - that hubris - that I appreciate, and I felt similar feelings as I saw a lone ant making his way across our kitchen counter. I knew that soon we’d be locked in battle for control of the kitchen, but at that moment, about a month too soon [...]

  Skokie Public Library's February STEAM Engines club, featuring STEAM learning and hands-on activity for kindergarten through second graders, focused on super cool retired scientist Emmett Chappelle. Chappelle had an exciting and varied career, including working with NASA to support their flight initiatives. Perhaps most prominently, he was involved with the Viking 1, the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars! For the purposes of our program, however, we chose to focus on his work as an exobiologist. Don’t know what that is? We didn’t either! The kids had fun guessing, though. Turns out it’s perhaps not as heart-racingly thrilling as [...]