Homeschool Club, 3rd Edition

First day back with the Homeschool Club today, and I had 27 kiddos (huge for our library).

Two years ago, I worked with a local co-op to establish goals and the purpose of the group.

1. Get kids used to public speaking.
2. Give kids opportunities to work in groups (who aren't siblings).
3. Kids work with a different adult.

We have been meeting during the school year once a month for an hour.

What went down:

We started with a getting to know you game: on the way into the meeting room, kids were given toilet paper and told, "Take as much as you think you will need."  That was it, no further instructions. After all the kids had their toilet paper, I took 4 squares myself and started off by touching each square one at a time as I made statements:
1. My name is Kathy.
2. I work at the library.
3. I like to watch mysteries on TV.
4. I like to play volleyball.

One of the older kids had already played the game before, he had taken 6 squares and wanted to go next. After he went, I had the kids guess what the toilet paper was for before we had everyone else go. When some stragglers came in, the kids went wild suggesting the late comers take a lot or a little (got a little loud for a moment).

The kids all cooperated beautifully, even the kid who took 37 squares!

For each kid the first square was to say their name, and I would have the group repeat the name back to me. If they stopped listening, I would just ask them the last thing the kid said, "Did anyone hear what restaurant John likes to visit?" Occasionally I had to prompt kids, what do you like to do outside, what's your favorite color, etc,. This game took A LOT longer than I had anticipated, we were left with about 20  minutes.

I had the Alike, Different sheet ready as a back up activity to the main activity (that we never even got to), so I used it for the back up activity to the ice breaker!

We finished with the same and different game. The kids had to find 5 other kiddos and write something they had in common in the circle, and something that was different outside the bubble. The younger kids had a harder time with this activity (4 & 5 year olds) because they couldn't write/spell or were reluctant to do so, but between myself and some of the older kids, we got their sheets completed for them. This was great for working on initiating a conversation with people, you wouldn't believe how hard this is for kids. I had the opportunity to model for them A LOT! Incentive to finish the sheet: they could go when it was full.

Here's the blank sheet:

Super Hero Training Academy (Library Version)

Most of my programs are drop in, finish the activities as you wish, hopefully check out some cool books and go home.  Super hero training academy was no exception.When the kids came in they got a check list with all the activities. Their mission? Complete the checklist.

Station One: Generate your superhero name and create a badge.

Patterns from here and here. The names were goofy and involved food. Some kids did not think having a cute name like the Invincible Marshmallow was very cool, so they made up their own.

Station Two: Knock over the villains with Captain America's Shield

This could have been so much bigger. Kids love stacking cups and knocking them down and stacking them again. This idea was on several different websites.

Station Three: My ABSOLUTE favorite.

Krytonite Keeper came from a few different ideas I saw online. One was a lava trail made out of LEGOs and the other was a radioactive orange game our teen librarian did with the teens the day before. The teens had an orange on a spoon and they had to knock off other kid's oranges to win while staying in a circle on the floor. I did not want to do this with the younger kiddos. I also loved the idea of walking across hot lava which was actually LEGO. Krytonite Keeper is "walking across crushed buildings to save Superman from the Kryptonite". This was totally awesome. Barefoot, spray your LEGOs later with some disinfectant spray. I used three tubs of LEGOs from our LEGO Club.

Station Four: Shoot the villain with water guns filled with paint.

Another Pinterest find that I tweaked for super hero training. This would have worked better if the water guns didn't leak all over the place. I filled the guns with a paint/water mixture.One gun had purple paint, one had green.

BEST SUMMER READING PICTURE EVER!

Station Five: Web Spinning, a crafty project, you can't see it but this table is full of girls.

Station Six: Leap over a building like Superman

I found the idea for the building jumping with another link on Pinterest. I wrapped different sizes of boxes and used label stickers for the windows. The kids came back to this activity over and over.

This program cost $4.22 for the red plates and the Frisbee at the Dollar Store. I used a lot of stuff I had left from other programs (I am a hoarder at work). I had almost 40 people show up (over 20 is excellent for our small library)!

Kryptonite Krispies in a Cup

I got the idea for the Kryptonite Krispies here.

I saw the picture and knew it would be an easy snack to add to our school age crafting program (I always try to add an edible crafty snack).

What you need:

• One large styrofoam cup per kid (a bowl might work better, our cups tipped over sometimes)
• 4 big marshmallows
• 1/4 tbsp butter
• 2/3 C of Rice Krispies (or the generic kind is definitely cheaper, one box was enough for about 20 kids)
• Green & Yellow Food coloring, 1-2 drops per cup

I had the kids put the marshmallows in the cup, a volunteer portioned out the butter for them and they added that to the cup as well. Microwave for about 12-18 seconds depending on how fast your microwave melts stuff. The volunteer handing out the butter also supervised the food coloring drops when the kids added them. Stir with a fork, and eat with same fork. Super easy, super quick. I'm sure you could modify with Fruity Pebbles or other such cereal. I can't wait to modify this and use it again.

Mad Scientists Take Two (Balloons & Electricity)

This book totally became my go to for science projects at the library. 

All of the experiments I used in this program came from this book!

Supplies:

Balloons, Plastic Cups, Hex Nuts (of various sizes), 1 Fluorescent Light Bulb, Lemon Juice, Paper Towel, Nickels & Pennies, and bowls for the water. 

The Experiments:

1. Balloons and Air Pressure Challenge. Found on page 134. Each table has a bowl of water, a few balloons and a bunch of cups. I used one balloon per kid and about 15 cups per table (the successful tables needed more cups). I first asked the kids how many cups they thought we could get to stick to a balloon, and I showed them how I could stick one cup to the balloon. Process: After one child blows up the balloon to about grapefruit size, another child dips the top of 2 plastic cups in water and then uses the surface tension to hold the cups to the balloon. The first child blows more air into the balloon, the air pressure inside the cups changes so the cups stick to the balloon. Pause for more cups, and keep blowing and sticking cups on as long as you can. The challenge was to get over 10 cups on a balloon and one group of kids did it!

2. Balloon Banshee. Found on page 182. Each child has a balloon and a hex nut. I challenged the kids to make noise with their balloons using both of the items. Eventually one of the kids figured it out: put the hex nut inside the balloon and use two hands to get it spinning along the inside of the balloon. As the sides of the nut hit the inside of the balloon, they make a vibration. The faster you can get the nut going around inside the balloon, the more constant the sound is until it sounds like a very annoying banshee. I went around and blew up balloons for kids who couldn't and stuck a nut in and tied it off. Each child got to take one of these fun noise makers home with them!

3. Light a Lightbulb using a Balloon. Found on page 200. Can it be done? First we tried rubbing the balloon on a kids head. Rub and have the kids sing a fun song like the ABC's (it's corny, but they'll do it). Turn off the lights (have a helper do that), stick the balloon to the end of the bulb. We didn't get it to work, we tried it again and sang the ABC's backwards, still didn't work. I had some wool yarn, we tried that and I had the kids count by 5's to 100 as we rubbed. We were able to get a short spark out of the light bulb! The kids came up with different scenarios that we tried out to get the light bulb to light up with the balloon.

That was the transition for building a battery out of money (electricity)

Can we make electricity with money?

4 (& 5). Penny & Nickel Battery. Found on page 192 (I had to wait for the book to come back to the library to find out the correct number of coins for this post). Each table had a small cup of lemon juice, paper towel squares cut into 1" squares, a few sheets of paper towel to lessen saturation levels, and 6 of each clean pennies and nickels (cleaned the night before).

Waaaay back at the beginning we had put the money into different bowls of water: one with soap, one with salt, one with lemon juice and one with vinegar and made predictions about which would be the cleanest (it didn't work how it was supposed to, but that was okay it's more about making predictions and testing them out). The kids all looked at the money to determine the results. As they came up to look, one rep from each table took back 6 of each: pennies and nickels. Then they worked on creating their batteries.

When the paper towel is dipped in the lemon juice and placed between the pattern penny, nickel, penny, a slight charge will be created when you hold each end of the "wet-cell battery". Some of the tables got it to work, and some didn't. We predicted it was because of the amount of moisture on the paper towel squares, but ran out of time to test our hypothesis!

Mad Scientists Take One

I had the room organized in a U shape with four tables around a center table. This was an hour program and I had about 25 kids and 4 parents attend. We used the whole hour and I got all of my supplies at the Dollar Store, some I had on hand so I can't give an estimated cost. Maybe around $25-30 because of the milk purchase.

 Experiment One:

I used a few different resources for this one. There were a few YouTube videos and a few blogs that I read and looked at to nail down how I was going to run this in a large group. You can Google "plastic milk experiment" and find tons of different ways it can go.

Supplies:

• Warm whole milk (I set ours out in the sun all day and it got pretty warm). Some sites recommended a microwave, but that would be hard for a large group, maybe a crock-pot if you are in a pinch.
• Vinegar
• Strainer
• Plastic Cups
• Tool for stirring
• Cookie cutters (my co-worker thought to use candy molds, which I think would totally make this project rock in large groups, but after the event)

Prep:

• Red solo cups with wooden craft sticks in them.
• Stack of small paper plates with paper towels on them
• Three large bowls with strainers over the top.
• Table of cookie cutters laid out.

I started off by giving each kid a red solo cup (insert song in your head here) and a wooden craft stick. 

My lovely assistant and I went around the tables giving each kid a cup of warm whole milk. Then my parent volunteers who attended with their kiddos followed behind us pouring 1 tablespoon of vinegar into their cups.I had them stir for a loooong time. Probably five minutes, some elected to stir longer. After most had been stirring for a while I had them come to the table one at a time and dump their mixture into a strainer over a bowl. When the whey had gone through the strainer, I plopped the "caesin" or curds on their paper towel covered plate.

They had to dry out their caesin with the paper towels, the more dry they got it the better it worked in the molds. After they got "most" of the whey out of their caesin, they patted it flat then used a cookie cutter to make a shape. Picking up the stuff that fell outside the cookie cutter and putting it inside the cookie cutter and patting it down made their shapes more sturdy. I highly recommend using Meagan's idea of a candy mold for the shapes (brilliant!). They left them on the paper plates for later and we moved on to the next experiment. 

Experiment Two:

This experiment can be found all over the internet, just Google "milk soap experiment".

Supplies:

• What was left of the whole milk (about a gallon)
• 1/2 Gallon of 2%
• 1/2 Gallon of 1%
• Tall container of buttermilk
• 2 short containers of half and half
• dish soap
• Qtips
• Plastic Shot Glasses from the Dollar Store
• Plastic trays with sections from the Dollar Store
• Food Coloring or liquid watercolors (if you haven't discovered these guys yet, they are the bomb!)

Prep:

• Put about 1/2 inch of soap in the bottom of the shot glasses and stuff a bunch of Qtips in them (those are technical terms). Each kid will need several Qtips, I think I used about 10-12 shot glasses and refilled later as needed. 
• Label one tray with what type of cow product goes where. Each type of milk should have a spot. 

I gave each kid a tray, then I had parent volunteers (pulled from the hallway) pour their liquid into the designated tray spots. After the milk was poured, I had the kids put drops of food coloring 2-3 per section. They had a hard time not mixing the colors and were sadly disappointed later if they had. After they all have their liquids and coloring, I did one demonstration in the middle on a thick paper plate to show the kids how to "use" their Qtips. After that it was a free for all! 

That was our last project, so the kids could just leave their milk trays on the table and leave, because there was going to be no crying over spilled milk on my watch (ha ha).

Edible Homeschool Fun

Our final Homeschool club was today and I've been seeing all of the fun Edible Books for National Library Week and decided to try it out with just my Homeschool groups. I told them to create something edible based on one of their favorite books. I was so impressed with the creativity!!

This book was checked out, but I found a YouTube clip of Eric Carle reading the book, and the kids were super excited about listening to him read his own book.

Turkish Delight

The grocery store was out of blueberries!
(I had the same problem)

The 11 year old boy came up with this one by himself. He recited the prophecy from memory when he realized the books were all checked out! It was super impressive, and I love this series.

My attempt at a healthy edible book! Strawberries, (frozen) blueberries, and chocolatey mud!

I set up two tables for the creations to go on. When they were all set up, I presented mine first and read Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes to the kids. I had the kids warm up to help me sing Pete's song using Jim Gill's Toe, Leg, Knee song. After I read my book, the next kids read their book, too. And the next and the next. I wasn't planning on having them all read their books, but it worked out great. I had just asked them to tell me about their display and talk about the book a little bit. Some of the chapter book kids had to do that, but it worked out for them as well. By the end of the presentation the kids had drifted from the tables to the floor in front of the readers!

This has been one of the most exciting series of programs I've done. Watching some of the kids go from crying at the beginning of the year when s/he presented their all about me posters to reading a book in front of a group of 20 kids was so rewarding. I can't wait to see what next year will bring.

Side note on the Pete the Cat Shoes "cupcakes" for anyone looking for preschool ideas for a 1000 Books Program or other Early Literacy Event idea: 1 1/2 twinkies, and white frosting and about 5 minutes of my time. This would make a great parent/ child activity for preschool aged chidlren. Fine motor for spreading the frosting and talking about what to decorate the shoe with to rehash the story. . . I'm re-using this idea in the future.

LEGO Sink or Float

This program served dual purposes!!!  

Add a little dish soap to some water, challenge the kids to build something out of LEGO that will float, and wallah! It was one of THE BEST LEGO programs I've ever had. Kids were engaged, they were talking between themselves and working together to build better floating structures. I was able to throw in words like density, and surface tension. The kids loved it and it was amazing to watch. 

Prep time for this program about 5 minutes! I had to kick them out after an hour and a half. 

Next time I will bring some of my old beach towels so we won't have to use so many paper towels.

LEGOs were cleaned in the process of creating floating structures.

If you Give the Children a Mad Lib

Homeschool Club last month rocked!

I ordered twenty copies of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff so each pair of kids could share a book. I went over the different parts of the books with the kids and it was great. There were several different editions of the book, so book jackets, end papers and covers were different on some allowing the children to use the new words for different parts of the book to explain the differences. After we talked about the different parts, we choral read the story together. It was so much fun to hear twenty little voices reading the book together (a nerdy librarian heaven). We talked about the illustrations and how they gave picture clues to what was happening with the words of the story.

I found a mad lib on the blog Play Dr Mom that took out the nouns and verbs and some adjectives to make it a fun Mad Lib. Each home school student got a sticker with "noun", "verb", or whatever words were missing. This was a great opportunity to go over the definitions of those types of words. After a student contributed, they handed me their sticker. This allowed for everyone to have their own unique word. The older kids were pretty patient waiting for the younger kids to come up with their words. After I had all of the words, I read aloud the result as I wrote it out on slips of paper.

Each child then got a slip of paper with a sentence from the story, a piece of scratch art paper and a little wooden stick to scratch their illustrations with. I reminded them about what we had talked about with illustrations. There were more children than strips of paper, so I had one of the older children make the title page and some of the others made up their own funny parts of the story and we added them in. It is super easy because you just put, "and then . . . " it doesn't have to make sense because the mad lib in general was silly.

The results were put in a binder. I had numbered the slips ahead of time and was able to put them back in order as I got each finished page from the children.

It was a fun packed hour and the book is in a binder on display in our children's area!

 

Valentine's Minute to Win It

I had originally set out to have a regular non-themed Minute to Win it, but when I was looking around Pinterest for some ideas to get started for my party, I found a Valentine’s Minute to Win It post by Sassy Sites and loved the idea. I used several of the games they had used: the Heart a Stack, a game they called Heart Pick Up but I renamed it Heart Transplant (because I love a good play on words for kids),  Cookie Face (which I have done in the past) and Candy Corn stick up. I found another cookie game called Unicorn Horn at the Teaching Reef . I looked online for stopwatches and found a real Minute To Win It timer on YouTube. This was awesome! The kids LOVED helping countdown to the start and the finish!

Heart a Stack

We started out with Heart a Stack. I gave each kid 15 conversation hearts and a plate. The kids had one minute to stack their hearts and at the end I counted how many were left standing. Many of them were finished stacking in less than a minute (but I kept the number at 15 hearts, I didn't want them to get sick later).

Heart Transplant

The kids did Heart Transplant 1 in which the kids had to transfer the hearts from the table to their plate using chopsticks (we used Valentine’s pencils that they got to keep). Then I passed out straws for Heart Transplant 2 and the kids had to use the straw to suck up the heart and move it to the plate. Both heart transplants were scored by the number of hearts they had transferred from the table to the plate in one minute.

Cupid's Arrow

             








      

 We re-used the straw for their FAVORITE game called Cupid’s Arrow that I had found somewhere on line (I have no idea where) and tweaked a bit so they could shoot their “arrows” through hanging heart shapes. There was one kid to hold the heart so it didn't turn, one who was the cupid and the next two in line were the judges counting the arrows that went through the heart. It worked out great because I had four kids counting! The number of arrows was added to the tally.

Unicorn Horn

Next the kids played Unicorn Horn with cookies. I had three people holding a plate of ten cookies. Then three kids had a minute to stack as many as they could on their forehead. This time I let them count their highest tower to add to their score. The highest unicorn horn was 9 cookies high! (we reused the cookies for each kid and I let them pick out 2 fresh cookies to eat, but they had to save one for the next game). The next game was Cookie Face this was a do or die game. They put a cookie on their forehead and had to get it into their mouth without using their hands. They got a new cookie to eat if theirs had dropped on the ground.

Candy Corn Stick Up

They also played Candy Corn Stick Up, which was sort of lame. They all had to line up 20 Valentine colored candy corns around their paper plates in a circle. We did one last challenge, the Love Chain. This one was who could make the longest paper chain in a minute.

Love Chain

A lot of the kids were getting picked up at this point (I had more activities planned) so I gave them all a couple of the left over cookies and tabulated up scores. The top three kids got a one dollar little box of Valentine's chocolates and they all had pencils to take home (not to mention the cookies and candy). There was a tie for third so I used one of the challenges we hadn’t gotten to as a tie breaker. The Broken Heart – it was just a puzzle I made (cutting out four pieces of paper on top of each other so they were all the same).

Broken Heart

I tried to reuse stuff in different challenges as much as possible to keep the flow moving and the cost down. I ended up spending $30 dollars on supplies at Walmart for this party (I probably didn't have to buy the pencils, the Q-tips or the straws, but I found pink Q-tips and red and purple straws and just HAD to get them!) Overall I had 22 kids and one adult that I shanghaied into helping out attend this program!

Holiday Crafternoon

Every Wednesday is Schools Out Boredom Busters (SOBB)! The first Wednesday is an early release day for the district, so I show a movie with snacks to tide the kids over until their parents come to get them.

The second Wednesday of each month is Crafternoon! I set up 4-5 stations of activities for the kids to do at their own pace. Usually there is one uber-popular station and three other whip through them stations (kids choice not mine). This month was dedicated to the holidays and our stations were:

1. Gingerbread sugar cone trees. We did this last year, they LOVED it, so I brought it back and they LOVED it again this year.

2. Dangly spiral silver ornaments. Silver pipe-cleaners and beads wrapped around a toddler paint brush. The girls liked this one (not so much the boys).

3. Tree shape outlines out of construction paper + contact paper + small pieces of tissue paper = stained glass holiday trees! This did not go as planned, kids just took handfuls of tissue paper and dropped it onto their contact paper. My plan was to have them placed nicely one at a time. . . we had an entire hour to kill!

4. Paper chains with old book pages. A few adults were upset by the destruction of the books, but we used donations that we found to be worth less tha $5 on Amazon- no rare books were destroyed in the creation of these chains. Paper chains are always hit or miss with the kids. I've offered them at several other programs and NOT ONE CHILD has participated. Today, who knows. . .they wanted to break the world record (54 miles in 24 hours!) In one hour they managed to chain more than halfway around the library! 

They asked if they could chain again next week. The third Wednesday of the month is four player Wii gaming day. I always have extra games & coloring sheets set out for them to work on while they are not participating in the Wii play so I think I might just have to cut some more paper.

Gobble, Gobble

For Thanksgiving, I like to focus on Turkeys and Thankfulness. I did three different Turkey storytimes the past two weeks. One was a preschool outreach visit, one a library preschool storytime and the third was at a school age storytime that I am trying to get going (sLOW numbers).

The book set list was different for each group (at least 3 of the 4). At the outreach storytime I read four books (these kids are GREAT listeners and have really long attention spans): Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano, I'm a Turkey by Jim Arnosky, 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey (my fave) and Run, Turkey, Run! by Diane Mayr. At the preschool storytime I took out 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, and at the school age storytime I took out Run, Turkey Run.

We sang songs at both preschool storytime sessions. I found a great song on Perpetual Preschool and made up a quick flannel board.
Turkey's wearing his red feather, red feather, red feather.
Turkey's wearing his red feather on Thanksgiving Day.
I just added a new feather for each verse, ending with Turkey's wearing his rainbow feathers. . .

How could I have forgotten about Mama Turkey Bird? I was in the middle of reading a book at the outreach program when this song I sang years ago with my two-year-olds at daycare popped into my head. I have NO IDEA where I got it from (sounds suspiciously like Dr. Jean's Mama Goonie Bird). . .

Mama turkey bird had many chicks, many chicks had mama turkey bird.
They couldn't walk, and they couldn't talk, but they could go like this. Right wing (make a wing and flap your left arm, the kids will flap their right arms).
Then at each verse add left wing, right foot (stomp foot), left foot, up & down (bend knees), turn around. End with sit down.

We also talked about how turkeys are birds like chickens and lay eggs, so we could use shaker eggs to Laurie Berkner Band's I Know a Chicken.

The craft was a simple: glue a turkey shape, feather, and googily eyes to a paper then use markers to add the other details kids wanted.

The school age kids made snack turkeys out of a few different ideas I saw on Pinterest. I wanted to combine the junk food turkeys with the candy turkeys and came up with: an Anjou pear body, pretzels coated in chocolate frosting and M&Ms for the feathers, cheese for beak and feet, and Cheerios for eyes. They turned out pretty good and the kids, although nervous about the reddish pears really enjoyed their entire turkeys!

School Age Explorers: Mud & Worms

One hour? Four Stations...

I knew had a hunch that my station idea wasn't going to work, but really wanted to try it to keep kids (and me) on track for time. Why did I know it wasn't going to work? Kids play, learn and explore at different paces. This system would require them to stick together for about ten minutes and rotate to a new station at the same time. The system actually wasn't that bad and it did help to get all the kids to same tables at the same time, eventually!

At the beginning of the program I read Diary of a Worm by Doreen Conin.I was able to muster a few laughs and giggles, so will be reading again at our next School Age Explorers program. It also allowed time for stragglers to trickle in before I started explaining the different stations.

Station One: Mud Playdough (Non cook playdough recipe with cocoa for color)

Station Two: Sensory Worms (aka cooked spaghetti - I am sorry Head Start)

Station Three: Worm Painting (with cooked spaghetti- sorry again Head Start)

Final Station: Dirt cups with pudding, crushed oreos and gummy worms.

Oh how I wish I had taken a final picture at the end. It took over an hour to clean up the room and I was covered in flour from the playdough, but it was SUPER fun! The kids had a blast! The vaccuum got up most of the cooked pasta. I have been trained (by Head Start) that it is evil to waste food in front of kids who are starving. I'm sure there is something else I could have used like yarn for the worm paintings (now that I think about it). Not sure how I could have got around the sensory tubs unless I used REAL worms, which would then be cruelty to animals. . . so I just bit it and used the cooked pasta.

The station cards did work, but I messed up the order of the stations on the cards and this was VERY TRAUMATIC for some of the kids. I wanted them to rotate from librarian led activity to self-guided activity and had mislabeled the stations to make that impossible to happen. So I didn't go in the order of the cards and that caused a lot of chaos! I will diligently plan where I put the Station posters next time to allow the flow to follow the cards! So I do plan on using my stations and station cards next time now that I am more prepared for how they will work!

Supplies (for 25 kids)
Art Projects: 2 boxes of cooked spaghetti, paint & paper
Playdough: flour, vegetable oil, cocoa, & salt
Dirt cups: 8 boxes of chocolate pudding mix, 1/2 gallon of milk, 2 small conainers of oreos and 2 bags of gummy worms.