So this week wraps up our Strange ... But True? Summer Reading Club 2012, yesterday we went out with a bang at the Montrose Park! We had a bouncy castle and carnival games from BV Tool Rentals, a refreshing water park for the kids to frolic in, our tie-dye-ing station all set up, and I had my camera at the ready!
I'll be posting my official post later this week or at the start of next week! I still have to post about our Monster Week with the Little Einsteins and Young Professors and Guest Wednesday with Les Anderson. And plus, I took about 250 pictures at the party! So it's going to take me a while to go through them all, pick out the good ones, and edit them! So please bear (pun! .... get it? no probably not, but Les Anderson talked a bit about bears during his Guest Wednesday visit, no? not funny? ok) - bare with me!
Until then here's a teaser picture from our Party from yesterday! This is a shot of some of the kids in the water park. Just before we started our water balloon fight we got a group picture, here the kids threw the water balloons up high and screamed as they were bombarded by rogue balloons!
Anyways, I just wanted to thank all the kids, Rhonda, the Beaver Valley Public Library, all our fantastic Guests for out Guest Wednesdays, the Trail Daily Times (for putting up with my constant emails and for sending the lovely Breanne Massey to the party to take some pictures and ask questions for the paper!), parents, and everyone for making this such a fun job for me! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
Today for out theme I thought science is awesome and so far this summer we've had lots of fun looking at science themed stuff, from biology, zoology, chemistry to math, so I thought more science is always a good thing!
Voila! You see? A simple piece of paper, one loop with a twist (Mobius Strip) and a circular loop!
So, the day before I practised my Möbius strip making and paper loop making! The above and below pictures are the before and after of my loops! The fascinating thing about Möbius strips is how simple, yet complex they are! All a Möbius strip is a loop that has a twist through it! (see above picture on the left!)
Tada!
The Strange ... But True? fact about a Mobius strip that makes it so weird, is that it is characterized as a surface with only one side and one edge, WHA- what!?!! right?
But its true and you can totally try it out for yourself its easy! Cut out a strip of paper and give it a twist before you tape your loop! Then with a pen or pencil start in the middle at a point in our loop and draw a continuous straight line down the middle until you connect the line. :O
The Möbius strip was found by two great German mathematicians, August Ferdinand Möbius (for whom the Möbius strip is named for) and Johann Benedict Listing in 1958.
I'm probably not it explaining it right, but there is this great story on YouTube, that introduced me to Möbius Strips! It's a video done by Vihart, who calls herself a Mathmusician and has a YouTube channel full of crazy, awesome math and music related videos that will blow your mind!
Anyways, I played the story of Wind and Mr. Ug for the Mad Scientists, its a good story that may make you cry :( its a little sad but also well told! I'll post the video here for you to watch! Let me know your thoughts!
PA-PA-PAR-PAR-PARTY!!! (P.S. this picture was featured on the second page in the Trail Daily Times today! Much better in colour, though, no?)
So, from all of us at the Beaver Valley Public Library, you are invited to ...
Our Flyer for the Event!
Yay! I'm so excited, yet also a little sad, since this marks our last week of the Summer Reading Club and therefore drawing to a close my time this summer at the Beaver Valley Public Library! :(
Sara, Zoe, Michael and Sam are getting excited for our party this Thursday!
In the meantime though, I am looking forward to the bouncy castle!!!, the tie-dye-ing!!!, and games and just EVERYTHING coming up for the party at the Montrose Park this week! I hope to see you there!
Today, Susan and Stephanie joined me to practise some tie-dye-ing at my house, since we are planning to have a section at the party this Thursday devoted to tie-dye-ing capes! We shall indeed be assembling some super heroes at the party!
Story time with Mrs. Giles! These kids are absolutely adorable!
So this Tuesday the Little Einsteins had lots of fun stretching their imaginations as the theme this week for the little ones was DRAGONS!!!!
Rhonda started things off as per usual with the Name Box and some classic songs!
For stories she read through some dragon books! She also read "Sophie and the Sea Monster" by Don Gillmor and illustrated by Michael Martchenko (known to me as the awesome guy who illustrates a lot of Robert Munsch books!
This is such a cute story and hearing Rhonda read it in such an animated and fun way was awesome! The kids enjoyed it immensely - as did I! It has become a favourite of mine this week, as I took it out to read to the Young Professors and Mad Scientists - who loved it just the same!
Along with that, Rhonda had set up her felt board and did a lovely rendition of 5 little monkeys, re-warped into 5 little dragons! The kids sand along and had a blast!
Today's group shot - check out these Mad Scientists! They be cray-ze!
Oho! A whole week late! Here's what we did last week with the Mad Scientists!
We had lots of fun! We watched for the capillary action of water, water bending, and watched the Hank Green video like the Young Professors! We also continued on our Water Week journey by playing with some waterbeads, which I swear, these Mad Scientists would be content playing with these waterbeads hours on end!
Waterbeads! AW YEAH!
Alicen, Haley and Emily playing with some waterbeads!
Sara, (Chloe behind her!), Caleb, Justice and Chase - barely seen! and Kyleen!
Oh! And we were also informed by Miss Emily that Kyleen's birthday was coming up so we sang some impromptu Happy Birthday Songs! :)
I read to them a story from the book: The Kid Who Named Pluto - and the Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People in Science by Marc McCutcheon. What a fantastic book! Its a compilation of stories of young people discovering and creating things to do with science! I had to interlibrary loan it so unfortunately we don't have it here in Beaver Valley, but do look for it elsewhere! Or even come and interlibrary loan it here, like me!
We read the story about Venetia Burney, who at the age of 11, suggested the name of Pluto to name the newly found Planet X in 1930!
There are many more stories in the book, of which I would have liked to read with the kids, yet alas! time is always of importance and unfortunately the hour we spend together goes by like lightning!
We ended playing some games! And of course by passing out some waterbeads for the kids to take home! Awesome!
Last week we had a great Guest Wednesday to add to the fantastic group of Guests we've had all summer! Last week's guest? David DeRosa from Cominco!
David is an avid bug finder and biology-nut! And today he shared with us some lovely samples of local creeks and marshes, in which some crazy critters were found!
David brought lots of tools and nick-nacks for the kids to explore the waters with! The kids loved it! We ewwwwwed and awwwwwed and macawed like cray-cray.... fish!
Here's some of our early birds going at 'er with some magnifying glasses and such!
Once we had all our Young Professors, Mad Scientists, guests and drop-in friends settled into the library and off exploring, we got everyone gathered and settled and David shared his adventures and travels into his field of study: bugs!
David spoke of the early spark of his interest in bugs as a kid bug-watching and net-building. He showed us some examples of the fantastic and easy-made nets that can be made at home with odds and ends. Dip one of these guys into some outdoor water source and get yourself a nice lovely bunch of bugs and such!
After his short presentation we were let lose again to explore the samples so generously brought in by David! Here's some pictures of that action!
Our theme this week - WATER! Good ol' H2O! AW YEAH!
Some of our Young Professors! Studying the capillary action of water! Although in this picture, Cohen looks more like a Young Superhero!
So last week I was so inspired and had enjoyed Science Week so much that I thought ... lets make Science Week a biweekly event. Soooooo..... Science DosWeek? Two Weeks of Science? Biweek sounds weird, like a tiny little bicycle thats too weak to carry anything ... So I just went with Water Week, when in doubt go with some alliteration! It'll lift your spirits ten-fold!
So Water Week commenced on a spritely and well organized pace! We had the joy of the Young Professors on Wednesday morning, who graced us with their presence and sound mind! The yells of H2O!!!! echoed throughout our library and I was thankful that we have our children's program before we open the library to the public! Although I'm sure Marie, our library director, and Nicole were not amused by our ruckus!
Nevertheless, 'twas a fine morning to bask in the miraculousness of water! Last week, during our Guest Wednesday, Allyson shared the Strange ... But True facts about water! She talked about ice floating in water and how used to it we must be, when in fact its CRAZY! Solids usually sink in their liquid form, right? It makes sense! Solid = dense and compactly sorted molecules that move slightly or vibrarte in place and Liquid = flowing spaced out molecules that fill their container. So you would think a solid would sink, but with ice in water, it floats! And thank goodness for that! Allyson explained to us the characteristics of water that lead to H-bonding and the crystalline-like spacing of water as it freezes into ice and how that also lends to the lovely shapes of snowflakes!
She also explained how vital floating ice is to our aquatic ecosystems and the world. With floating ice, lakes generally freeze on the surface, leaving fish underneath, still able to swim around! If water sunk when frozen than the tops of lake would freeze in the winter and sink to the bottom of the lake, wrecking havoc on marine life! Also if this occurred in our oceans, icebergs and frozen masses would sink and inevitability mean that the water levels would rise dramatically leaving little to no exposed land on the earth! Whew, TLDR --> floating ice is a strange, but good thing.
Thank you H-bonds!
So, we started our Wednesday morning talking about water's ability to DEFY GRAVITY!!! - insert Wicked music here - well its not as dramatic as I like make it out to be, but it is quite necessary for plant-life and therefore all life!
With the kids, we talked about watering plants and how their roots absorb the water in the soil, be it from rain or from us watering them! But how is it that water from the soil makes it to the tip-top tops of plants? especially if we think about the tall redwood trees or high reaching trees! The answer? capillary action!
To demonstrate water's gravity defying abilities I place one cup full of blue water atop a pedestal, or in this case a box of food colouring and then beside it on the table I placed an empty cup. To connect the two empty and water filled cups I took a piece of paper towel and placed it into one cup and into the other (see picture below). Almost immediately as I stuck the paper towel into the cup full of water the water slowly began its ascent up the paper towel! --> capillary action!
The capillary action of water in action!
Now, one special characteristic of water is its cohesiveness among its molecules, this is due to water molecules inherent polarity that is due to the electrostatic differences across the negatively charged oxygen atom and positively charged hydrogen atoms, because of this charge separation, water molecules have a positive side and a negative side, resulting in a polar molecule. And as we generally learn in our physics classes when we talk about charges, or if we are scrounging around on plentyoffish looking for our one true love, we know that OPPOSITES ATTRACT! So water molecules have a large affinity to fit together with their positive sides to negative sides of another water molecule, resulting in a high cohesion force (the ability of like substances to cling to each other) among water molecules to stay together.
A fine example of how water beads up due to COHESION! on non-polar material, like leaves.
You can really observe this cohesion of water molecules, when you place some water on wax paper and how immediately the water beads up into sort of spherical droplets rather than spreading out. These sphere-like droplets form from the attraction among the water molecules and results naturally in sphere shapes, since they have the smallest possible surface area to volume ratio.
Now in the terms of our paper towel in the water experiment what we see between our two cups, its this cohesion between the water molecules that allow for a string of water to slowly climb the paper towel. Its this action that also occurs in plants that allows for water to travel up a tree trunk or flower stem!
String of water molecules travelling up
a plant! H-bonds!
So the water in our paper towel moved along the tiny gaps in the fibre of the paper towel, this is due to the adhesive force (the clinging between two dissimilar substances - in this case the paper towel and water) that allows for the water to slowly climb the paper towel, and eventually start to fill the empty cup where the paper towel ends!
Although I didn't go into huge detail about the hydrogen bonding and cohesion/adhesion forces at work, the Young Professors were enthralled in coming back to watch the water climbing in between our activities for the day! Although I must say, the paper towel we used today worked wonders and the water moved quite quickly!
Here are some of the boys checking out the capillary action of water! Huzzah!
Chesney, Elijah, Cody and Cohen (and some parts of Tyler and an eye of Zoe!) looking a bit bewildered by water!
After this we had a quick story time with one of my favourite people, Mr. Hank Green, I took an excerpt from this great Crash Course video about water! In the video, Hank tells the story of an eccentric scientist named Henry Cavendish, who was a scientific genius/madman, who pre-discovered many scientific laws and made groundbreaking discoveries about the composition of water, in a time when people thought water was an element in itself!
Watch the video here in its entirety! The part we watched was from 5:50 - 7:56, although we did indulge ourselves to watch a few more bits and pieces!
