Uncategorized

Guest Post by Darlene Cavalier (SciStarter) Citizen Science Day (April 14), presented by SciStarter and the Citizen Science Association, is an annual event to celebrate volunteers, practitioners, and projects, and to introduce more people to opportunities to get involved in local or global projects in need of their help. [youtube id="yWZ6wybgHl4" width="800" height="450" autoplay="no" api_params="" class=""]   Libraries across the country can join in the celebration! We’ve provided some examples, descriptions, links, and “how to” resources to help you get started. If you’re already planning to participate, consider sharing your ideas in the comments below or via Twitter using the hashtag #CitSciDay2018.  [...]

Guest Post by Darlene Cavalier (SciStarter) [photo above] People swabbing microbes from shoes and cellphones at a Philadelphia Phillies game. Samples were sent to the International Space Station for growth rate comparisons. See Space Microbes for more information on this “out of this world” citizen science project. Citizen science enables people from all walks of life to participate in formal and informal scientific research. Millions of people help scientists monitor our nation’s rivers, streams and lakes, measure air quality in their communities and homes, track the migratory paths of wildlife (such as birds and butterflies),  ground-truth satellite data, and even accelerate [...]

Last month we shared a program for grades 3-5 at Skokie Public Library inspired by a visit to the Field Museum in Chicago about visualizing animals. This month we extended our inspiration and with the same grade range, focused on learning about animal specimens. Here’s what we did. We provided a brief slide presentation like the previous program to provide a foundation of knowledge before moving on to the hands on portion. The presentation defined “specimen” and provided photographs of various types of specimen, like life mounts, wet prep and pinned insects. We had a small group and they were all [...]

Guest post by Jessica Stoller-Conrad Curious kids can come up with some pretty tough science questions. “How many moons does Mars have?” “How does a hurricane form?” “What is the greenhouse effect?” It’s great that these young scientists want to learn more about our planet and our place in the universe! But what happens when parents, teachers, and librarians don’t know the answers? As grownups, we know that we can look up the answers online, but it’s sometimes difficult to tell if a website is a reliable source of information. And it’s even harder for kids to tell the difference between [...]

After a fall visit to the Field Museum, my colleague and I were inspired to share knowledge from the museum's extensive Specimens exhibit. We were particularly struck by the information about the Tully Monster, a prehistoric water animal whose fossils are abundantly found in Illinois, not too far from Skokie Public Library. We decided to focus on two main concepts for a Be the Scientist Program for grades 3-5: what are fossils and how do scientists determine what animals look like from them. Here’s what we did. We began the program with a brief slide presentation with background information about fossils. [...]

Guest post by Universe of Learning As we approach Women's History Month in March, we look to our partners to help inspire their communities, and future generations, to discover and explore the universe for themselves.  Join us in Girls STEAM Ahead with NASA to celebrate the women in STEM and NASA Astrophysics. Girls STEAM Ahead with NASA is an initiative within NASA's Universe of Learning, an informal STEM learning and literacy program.  Growing from the pilot program NASA Science4Girls and Their Families, we are entering the second year of the initiative, where we aspire to empower women's—especially young girls'—engagement in STEM [...]

As we’ve posted before, school breaks tend to include multi-day programs for grades 3-5. We previously challenged participants to choreograph a robot dance party and extract their own DNA. This past winter break featured a two day program about the science of baking. Each day covered science concepts related to the recipes we tested. And the best part: participants ate their experiment products! We should note that we have approval from our village’s health department to provide food related programs. Our library is equipped with a kitchen and participants were making the food item themselves rather than staff. Before exploring food [...]