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

School Age Storytime: Women's History Month 2022 Hold Fast to Dreams!

 

(K-1st grade, virtual Bedminster School)
Women’s History Month, sharing real & fictional stories of girls who defied convention, worked hard and followed their dreams. 

Amazing Grace – Mary Hoffman  Grace loves acting out stories. Told by her classmates that she can’t play the part of Peter Pan because she’s a girl & black, she learns that she can do anything she puts her mind to.

Every-Day Dress Up – Selina Alko – A girl ditches her princess duds in favor of daring dames – Amelia Earhart, Ella Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Marie Carie & more. Briefly discussed each woman presented. (When I read this in person and get to Stanton, I mention women couldn’t even vote in the US until a little less than 100 years ago – had them figure out how old the US is (240 years) so for most of that time, women couldn’t vote. Long battle, Stanton and others spent their whole lives (70 years!) trying to get women’s voting rights.

“It is fun to dress up in princess skirts for dress up or a party, but how would they like to wear long heavy skirts (as heavy as a box of books!) everyday?  They couldn’t bike, or climb a tree, or run and play…”

You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer! --- Shana Corey –  Delightful biography of the suffragist & newspaper founder who founded a movement to get women out of long limiting skirts.

Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell by Tanya Lee Stone -- In the 1830s, Elizabeth Blackwell refused to accept the common belief that women weren't smart enough or were too weak to be doctors. She wouldn't take "no" for an answer, was finally accepted at medical school and went on to become America's first female physician...paving the way for women doctors today.  

Nobody Owns the Sky: The Story of “Brave Bessie” Coleman – Reeve Lindbergh (youngest daughter of Charles) – No American flying school would teach Bessie because she was black so she sailed to France for lessons then returned to the states with the dream of starting her own school for African American pilots.

Movement – “Stretch High, Bend Low, Reach to the Sky, Then to Your Sides, Spread Your Wings, Turn around , then sit back down.”

Book: Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty   Rosie loves to invent until an uncle laughs at her cheddar cheese hat, but her Great-Aunt Rose (a tribute to the “Rosie the Riviters” of WW2) convinces her that inventions that fail are not failures….your brilliant first flop was a raging success…come on, let’s get busy and on to the next!…The only true failure can come if you quit.” 

 

Fun related book: Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty (2nd grade boy saves the day when his class is stranded on an island and he builds a suspension bridge.)

Speaking of architects, true story of unconventional architect Zaha Hadid
The World is Not a Rectangle by Jeannette Winter

Finished with the new book from our national poet Laureate

Change Sings by Amanda Gorman -- As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes—big or small—in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.

(As needed, did a variety of stretches and chants encouraging the kids to dream high & work hard to achieve their dreams)

Previous years: 
https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Women%27s%20History%20Month 
http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2014/03/school-age-storytimes-womens-history.html

Some other great titles:

An Equal Shot: How the Law Title IX Changed America by Helaine Becker
She Persited: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton (and others in the series
Sky High: The True Story of Maggie Gee – Marissa Moss
My Name is Not Isabella: Just How Big Can a Little Girl Dream? – Jennifer Fosberry
To the Stars: The First American Woman to Walk in Space – Carmella Van Vleet
Wilma Unlimited – Kathleen Krull&  Go Wilma Go! by Amira Rose Davis & Michael G. Long
Elizabeth Leads the Way:Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote – Tanya Lee Stone
I Could Do That: Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote – Linda Arms White
Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea: Marie Tharp Maps the Ocean Floor – Robert Burleigh

Many more here:

Telling Her Story: Picture Books About 99 Real-Life Mighty Girls & Women

New Mighty Girl Books for Women's History Month 2022

50 Children's Books About Mighty Girls & Women Around The World

Ignite Her Curiosity: 60 Children's Books to Inspire Science-Loving Mighty Girls

Science Is For Girls: 30 New Children's Books About Girls and Women in Science

Girls Make It Work: 30 Books About Mighty Girls and Women in Engineering

 http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2015/03/celebrating-women-history-month.html    http://www.whatdowedoallday.com/2013/03/women-in-history-best-books-for-kids.html

More on early pilots:  https://nobodyownsthesky.wordpress.com/

Bedm. 3/22.

Family Literacy Night - Superheroes are Everywhere (Virtual for Washington Elementary, Roselle)

Introduced myself as portraying Alice Paul, NJ Suffragist who had picketed the White House and even been imprisoned for demanding that women have the right to vote. 

Read Fight of the Century: Alice Paul Battles Woodrow Wilson for the Vote by Barb Rosenstock, the brand new book that depicts their struggle of wills in the fight to win the vote for women.

Talked about women finally getting the right to vote 100 years ago and that thousands of women (and men) worked for many years for women's suffrage. Shared the info and coloring page on Alice Paul from Remembering the Ladies: From Patriots in Petticoats to Presidential Candidates which profiles 69 women of all colors and creeds who worked for women's rights in this country. E-book available free of charge at my webpage tellingherstories.com.

Mentioned we now for the first time in our history have a woman Vice-President - Kamala Harris!

Shared her book Superheroes are Everywhere which shows how our own family and friends can be superheroes...and we can be too!  We read the "superhero Pledge" together. Asked them about superheroes in their own lives.  

Booktalked and shared selections from Barack Obama's inspirational Of Thee I Sing.

Finished by sharing the Schoolhouse Rock video "Suffering Till Suffrage"

School Age Storytime: Women’s History Month

 

Girls Can! Determination Succeeds.

A storytime for grades K-3 encouraging girls and boys to go beyond their comfort zones,
to take risks and make history!
Featuring women who overcame gender, racial, and religious prejudice and even powered through disability to do things that they were told they couldn’t.

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman 
(Grace loves acting out stories. Told by her classmates that she can’t play the part of Peter Pan because she’s a girl & black, she learns that she can do anything she puts her mind to.)

“Grace is a fictional character (book in Picture Book/Easy Fiction section) but many real women overcame prejudice…(the next books all in the Biography section – non-fiction (true))”

Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors? The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell by Tanya Lee Stone

(Elizabeth Blackwell gets 28 rejection letters but perseveres and when a medical school accepts her,  overcomes the teasing of her classmates and hostility of the townspeople, studies hard and graduates first in her class -- becoming the first female physician in America!)

Asked how many have a woman doctor? (about 1/2)
“next book is about a girl who would have to have many encounters with doctors…”

Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull Newer title Go Wilma Go! by Amira Rose Davis & Michael G. Long.

(Splendidly written inspiring story of a tiny, sickly black girl stricken by polio who overcame her disability and ended up winning 3 gold medals in track at the 1960 Olympics!) 

“Wlima made her mark on the race course. Ruth has made it in the court house…”

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy

(Debbie Levy’s wonderfully-written new biography of America’s first Jewish woman Supreme Court Justice vividly shows young readers how Ruth’s early exposure to racial, religious, ethnic and gender prejudice made her decide to become a lawyer and become a lifelong trailblazer and leader in the courts to fight for those rights. It also notably includes Ruth’s lifelong friendship with Antonio Scalia and how their deep disagreements over legal issues did not keep them from talking about these issues and traveling together around the world. It is a message of talking tolerance deeply needed in these divided times.)

My Name is Not Isabella: Just How Big Can a Little Girl Dream? – Jennifer Fosberry

(Over the course of a day, a little girl pretends to be Sally Ride, Annie Oakley, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Elizabeth Blackwell, and her own Mommy – concluding “It’s me Isabella, the kindest, smartest, bravest, fastest, toughest, greatest girl that ever was”…dreaming about who she would be…tomorrow.)  
Great book to use to see which of these women the kids recognize – and as a lead in to a show and tell of other biographies for them to read themselves.

More ideas for Women’s History Month: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Women%27s%20History%20Month

3.2018 Bedm.

School Age Storytime “Mothers of Invention”

 

A K-3 storytime emphasizing pioneering women inventors and the challenges they faced. Opened with a discussion of the phrase “Necessity is the mother of invention”

In the Bag! Margaret Knight Wraps it Up by Monica Kulling – the story of the 19th century “Lady Edison” (also discussed NJ’s own Thomas Edison) Knight, eventual holder of twenty patents, fought discrimination and proved that she was just as intelligent an inventor as a man.

Action: Hi, My Name is Joe & I Work in a Button Factory – Left/Right reminders, get the wiggles out!

One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay & The Recycling Women of the Gambia by Miranda Paul – showed the pictures and summarized this true story of a woman who had the idea of turning the mountains of discarded plastic bags plaguing her village into crocheted purses.

Imaginative Inventions by Charise Mericle Harper (poems about inventions – shared the Frisbee poem – another example of reuse, though eventually became plastic!)

Ada’s Ideas by Fiona Robinson – showed the pictures and summarized the story of the world’s first computer programmer.

Additional wonderful books featuring the women profiled above – great for “compare & contrast”:

Spic-And-Span! Lillian Gilbreth’s Wonder Kitchen by Monica Kulling --the story of the world's first female industrial engineer & efficiency expert and the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

 

Closed with two books celebrating imagination, creativity & girl power (with a nod back to the paper bag we started with):

If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen – a kid imagines a truly spectacular house (I encouraged kids to design their own imaginative rooms) -- and The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch – a princess outsmarts the dragon holding her fiance prisoner then decides the shallow prince is not worth marrying.

Another wonderful empowered princess –Princess Atalanta from “Free To Be You and Me” – check  out the Youtube video HERE.

If you want to get your kids involved in inventing & constructing, you might want to do a “Cardboard Challenge” inspired by Caine’s Arcade – details at: http://cainesarcade.com,
http://cardboardchallenge.com/ and 2017: http://imagination.org/our-projects/cardboard-challenge/

Bedm 3/2017

For more women’s history programs, check out: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/03/just-bag-it-ages-5-10-well-share-story.html
http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2015/04/mothers-fathers-of-invention-if-at.html
http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search?q=women%27s+history

Other ideas: https://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2021/12/homeschool-book-club-activities/

S.T.E.M. Playground : Straw Buildings, Snap Circuits & More! (Ages 2 to 102)

School's off so come and explore S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) at the library.  No registration required  Drop-in to this informal program. Stay a few minutes or several hours.  (Expanded to allow younger children with Duplo, Shapes, & Train Sets)

Create circuits with Snap Circuits; build simple machines with Legos; construct with Keva blocks, K'nex, or Straw Builders; defy gravity with your balancing skills; engineer a roller coaster; explore magnets; solve a math or science puzzler and more.

Stations:

• Thomas the Tank Engine Train Set Up (big bin of track & trains) – kids laid out tracks and played (on the stage)

on the floor:

• Toobers and Zots 
• Foam Shapes
• Straws & Connectors / Strawbees
• Duplo

on tables:

• Deciphering codes (left over from Crazy 8’s Spy Program)
• Visual Brainstorms Cards
• Blokus Game
• Checkers Game
• Keva Blocks
• Magnetic Blocks
• Lego
• K’nex
• Snap Circuits
• Unit Cubes

2.20.17

LOOKING FOR MORE STEM FUN? – Sign up for this program on March 2nd:

Celebrate Maker and Women's History Month -- We'll hear the story of Margaret E. Knight, the nineteenth century inventor who figured out how to make a machine that could fold a flat-bottomed paper bag, then we’ll make wild and wonderful paper bag creations.