School Age S.T.E.A.M. Storytime & Craft: Building Bridges

 

School Age S.T.E.A.M. Storytime & Craft: Building Bridges

Wednesday March 19th 4:30-5:30 p.m.

(geared to ages 5-9, but older/younger siblings are welcomed)

Registration Required.

For Women's History Month, we'll share the story of Emily Roebling, the "Secret Engineer" behind the Brooklyn Bridge, then experiment with building a variety of bridges.

As children arrived, had books for browsing on bridges, various versions of "The Billy Goats Gruff" and Rosie Revere, Engineer and other empowering picture books by Andrea Beaty

Read aloud the book Secret Engineer: How Emily Roebling Built the Brooklyn Bridge by Rachel Dougherty, booktalked the other books.

Explored tension/compression & created a human suspension bridge: 

Acted out the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff (no pictures)

Explored the strength of a beam bridge with this model:

And tested the strength of paper and straw-built bridges: 

More details on all of these projects can be found here: 

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2017/07/fairytale-engineering-three-billy-goats.html

CSL Clarence Dillon Library March 2025

Fairytale Engineering "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" -- Build a Better Bridge

Take our bridge-building challenge and see who can build the strongest bridge!

Preschool Fairytale Engineering Ages 3-6
Kids Fairytale Engineering Challenges K-4
Families with children of different ages are welcome to come all together to one program.

Kids browsed books on bridges and variations on The Three Billy Goats Gruff as we waited for everyone to arrive.

Opened by asking kids to remember what we did at our previous programs (Three Little Pigs – acting it out, building houses of different materials; Falling for Rapunzel, “Throw it Out the Window” song, creating ways for Humpty Dumpty to fall safely!)

Then 4 teen volunteers performed “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” puppet show – I narrated using the script from Yummy by Lucy Cousins for the younger group and Robert Bender’s version for the second.

Older group only – read aloud: Iggy Peck Architect by Andrea Beaty (a young boy’s love of architecture comes in handy when he rescues his class by making a bridge from shoelaces and a few other items!)  Booktalked her other titles.

Both groups – mentioned all bridges use two forces -- explored  compression and tension – team pushing & pulling or hands pushing together, pulling apart.

Showed pictures portraying bridges from around the world featured in Philemon Sturges beautiful book Bridges are to Cross (J624.2 STU), booktalked Mordecai Gerstein’s Caldecott-winning The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

Talked briefly about the different kinds of bridges – beam, arch, suspension, cable-stayed, truss; had kids and teens create human suspension bridge.

Stations:

Arch bridge models:

 

Beam & Suspension Bridge demonstrations with straws & string:

Paper & Penny Bridge Challenge:

K’nex Bridge Model-Making (thanks to Amy Koesler for sending me the instructions!)

plus Bridge (and other) Building with the ever-popular straws and connectors for the younger kids:

Music playing: Philadelphia Chickens by Sandra Boynton

More ideas at: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Bridge-Building

http://showmelibrarian.blogspot.com/p/all-things-steam.html
https://radnorlibrarysmartkids.wordpress.com/

Skokie Library’s K’nex Bridge Building video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBozXnNTZ6E

7/26/17 BWL

Next week: The Tortoise & the Hare – Build a Better Obstacle Course!