Earth Day: Invention Convention!

Earth Day - Invention Convention!   (For ages 5 - 11)   REDUCE**REUSE**RECYCLE!

Join us as we celebrate Earth Day by making new things out of old materials....our only limit is our imagination (and the materials we have on hand)! Please bring in (clean) cardboard food boxes, bottle caps, yogurt containers, paper towel rolls, old cds, egg cartons -- and anything else you can think of to share with the group as our building materials -- then we'll see what we create!

• As kids arrive, have them browse invention books (Dewey 608-609’s, assorted inventor biographies, plus titles below)
• Showed book segment from: Reading Rainbow: Galimoto
• Shared: pages from Imaginative Inventions (609 HAR), So You Want to Be an Inventor (608 St. George), If I Built a Car (Van Dusen), Weslandia (Fleischman) (left-out kid invents a whole civilization from a stray plant that grows in his garden one summer)
• Briefly booktalked:   Dotty Inventions (& Some Real Ones Too) (609 MCG),    Horray for Inventors (609.22 WIL),  Now and Ben: The modern inventions of Ben Franklin, Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci, Timeless Thomas: How Thomas Edison Changed our Lives (all 609.2 BAR), Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women (609.2273 THI), inventors biographies e.g. The Real McCoy and All Aboard: Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine (JBiog MCCOY), JBiog Edison, Marvelous Mattie and In the Bag (JBiog Knight) Mistakes that Worked (609 JON), The Kid who Invented the Trampoline (609 WUL), Galimoto (Williams), Hoover’s Bride (Small), Ruby May Has Something to Say (Small), If I Built a House (Van Dusen), Going Up: Elijah Otis' Trip to the Top (JBiog Otis), It's a Snap: George Eastman's First Photograph (JBiog Eastman), Spic-and-Span: Lillian Gilbreth's Wonder Kitchen (JBiog Gilbreth)

• Defined the word "prototype" -- mentioned they can make either real or imaginary inventions. 
• Recycled materials inventions --Materials: egg cartons, bottle caps, shoe boxes, oatmeal cartons, etc. plus tape, scissors, pipe cleaners, markers, paper, pencils, etc. 
• Music playing while constructing: Deep in the Jungle by Joe Scruggs (started with song "I Gave Mom a Skateboard for her Birthday.")

4.2014

Consider: Reading Rainbow: Alistair's Time Machine (DVD: How is it Made?) -- includes amusing inventions that never quite made it.

Additional Book possibilities:
The Most Magnificent Thing -- Ashley Spires (2014) -- humorous title shows value of not giving up

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