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Kids Maker Day 2015

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015

(cross-posted from Mobile Musings)

This year’s Kids Maker Day (part of our local Heritage Days) is now behind us and was a big success as always. Our theme was flight.

We had kids from ages 2 to 80 participate. (A couple adults said that building planes seemed like more fun that listening to lectures in the adult portion of the program. :)

80

One of the town elders shows us how it’s done

We started the day with building paper airplanes. Most kids started with designs they were already familiar with and then drifted into the books and printouts that we’d laid around the tables for more exotic designs. After making their planes, we went outside for flight tests, which led to testing, redesign, iteration, and more testing. We had contests for the longest distance flight, the longest time in the air, the smallest plane, and the most visually attractive.

airplanes

Making paper airplanes

launch

smallest

Winner for the smallest (and yes, it could fly)

most attractive

There was a tie for most attractive.

After that, we went on to make balsa wood gliders. This was a favorite activity of many of when we were young, and the kids really loved it.

After that, we shifted gears to build marble mazes. The kids really liked last year’s cardboard challenge, and this was a variation on that. I had deliberated beforehand whether to make this a contest of sorts, but ultimately left it more open-ended.

The kids wanted to form their own groups to do this and surprised us by dividing into just two groups — boys and girls. It was interesting to watch how the two groups worked with the boys ultimately splintering into several groups (and a few working by themselves) and the girls really bonding as a team and coming up with something quite complicated. Several of the kids were so absorbed in the work that they went right through lunch.

cardboard

After lunch came the favorite activity of the day — stomp rockets. These were built with 2-liter pop bottles, a length of bicycle tubing, a piece of PVC tubing, and a paper rocket. One of the highlights was when a couple girls launched their rocket, not once but twice, onto the roof of the building. It was also a revelation that stomping harder wasn’t necessarily better after a couple adults stomped so hard that they broke the bottles.

stomp

combination

This ingenious young man attached his paper airplane to his rocket.

stomp2

The day ended with a kid-suggested cooking activity. We made chocolate and caramel sauces and dipped fruit in them. (With the addition of this and a surprise visit from Smokey the Bear, we dropped the planned activities of hovercrafts, which were underwhelming in our pre-event testing, and kites, which we’ll save for another day.)

I’m already thinking about what we’ll do next year. Textiles? Cooking? Painting? There are so many choices.

Heritage Days for Kids 2012

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

Heritage Days for Kids was a great success this year.

The day started with the kids making tent cards with their names and getting to know each other. Then we did a digital photography challenge. This was one of the highlights of the day. You can read more about that here.

Then we had a fun art activity “Drawing With Your Eyes, Hand, and Mind” with local artist Roger McKasson. For this, we had to draw the contour of various figures without looking at the paper we were drawing on. The idea was to focus the eyes (and mind) on the details of the object, not the drawing itself.

Next, kids got to make their own books using templates we’d created.

After that, we learned about birds, butterflies, and pollination with Greg Magee. This included a special guest visit by a broad-tailed hummingbird (played by Greg’s wife Julie). Each of us had our picture taken with the hummingbird, even me.

          

Then, expert hydrologist Sharon Minchak taught us about groundwater, using a hands on model. The kids enjoyed pumping water with food coloring in and out of the model. I was surprised that some kids here didn’t know that they had wells. (Everyone here does.) Lots of implications to learn and think about.

     

    

Our final activity for the day was making seed art with Maurine Joens. We’d gathered seeds and materials for this for many weeks, and it turned out great.

All in all, it was a great day. Special thanks to Kim Vacariu and Wildlands Network for putting on this great event in our community.