School-Age: Bridges

This week is our library's official start to the Summer Reading Program. Since the Collaborative Summer Library Program theme is 'Build a Better World', this week I focused on building - specifically, building BRIDGES!

1. Reading
We read the book "Iggy Peck, Architect" by Andrea Beaty. I LOVED the rhythm of this book. The words flowed and rhymed, and also had many fun humorous parts that adults would enjoy. 

For a few portions of the book, Iggy Peck created actual architectural phenomenons: The Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Sphinx in Egypt, and the St. Louis Arch in Missouri. I printed out pictures of those places and compared them to the structures that Iggy Peck had created. 

2. Discussion
I had also printed pictures of different famous bridges throughout the world. I wanted the kids to get an idea that some bridges are functional and some are pieces of art. I also wanted to demonstrate that some bridges are famous because of how they were built or what they look like. Some of the ones we looked at were the Golden Gate Bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, and the Brooklyn Bridge, but I showed them about 10 bridges total.

3. Activity
I set almost half of the program time aside this week for our activity. I found a neat STEM building activity on the Frugal Fun 4 Boys blog. Using only a few materials and minimal direction, we had the kids build bridges.

We purchased/used:
*Clothespins
*Jumbo Craft Sticks
*Binder Clips

My teens made 5 kits for the kids to use in groups while in the library. We had the kids break up into groups of 3 or 4 kids to work on building together.

Each kit had:
A. 6 clothespins
B. 12 binder clips
C. 30 craft sticks

The build projects we did, depending on time, were:
A. Build the longest bridge
B. Build the tallest bridge
C. Build the most [architecturally] artistic bridge 

4. Take-Home
If the kids wanted to, we made smaller take-home kits that the kids could use at home. The teen volunteers had bagged them up prior to the program so we could hand them out in the last few minutes of the program. 


Notes:
This was a really fun program to do with the kids. The building aspect being somewhat open-ended was neat and slightly challenging. The older kids could definitely do it but it was difficult for the younger ones. However, having open-ended projects like this are great to challenge the way kids think. With the same materials, we had dozens of different ways of building demonstrated and it was awesome!