Game Club!

Since all the other cool programs are upcoming, I decided to take this break to blog about one of our (the teens and mine) constant favorites here at the library which is Thursday night Game night. This is a night for teens to come and relax and just have fun playing video games, board games, or challenging someone to a game of chess. I think it is really important for teens to have this night to just do something fun, and it really easy to set up and run. Having a game night is great for interaction with the teens too, as everyone is just having a good time playing a game. Teen programming does not have to be all complicated or fancy, sometimes a board game, Mario Kart, or a chess board is all it takes to bring the teens in, have them interact with you, and get them excited about the library. So go ahead, play that video game! Have some fun! It will be beneficial for you and the teens.

What is your favorite game? Leave a comment!

Dawn (and BMO) states: Who wants to play video games!?

May Programs

As we move into May, the speed of the programming picks up! There are some very exciting single programs planned and upcoming, and I am really looking forward to blogging about this! Stay tuned for Free Comic Book Day, Tech Petting Zoo, Teens Fourth Friday, Winter Beach Party (not so winter now I know, but our other date was snowed out!), and Honey Science to name a few. It is also time to start gearing up for summer and get all the good ideas figured out!

So as we round the corner to May and begin to pull together the final details for summer reading, I would love to hear what everyone is doing for your summer reading this year. Are you having an awesome author visit? Kickstarting a new program? Giving away great prizes? Let me know in a comment!

Dawn states: Teen programming is fun!

Food Science: Hot Cocoa Science

The winter months are a great time to do some science with things that are warm! What better way to warm up than hot cocoa! (I know we are getting into warmer months, but hey, iced hot cocoa anyone? Its a thing, look it up!)

Hot cocoa science is an easy way to get the teens to try out different flavor combinations, consider raw ingredients, how to combine ingredients, why cocoa powder tastes nasty, and most importantly learn how formulas work.


For this experiment, I provided some ingredients that teens may not think would taste good (like chili powder and salt) and things they seemed to think would be great (like cocoa powder and chocolate).
I challenged the teens to create their own cocoa combination, and wanted them to use the raw ingredients for the hot cocoa.


Their reactions were the best thing! They learned from this measuring skills, how flavor interactions work, and how combining certain amounts of the right things can make a delicious, one of a kind cocoa.

If you have any questions or need a list of what was used, send me an email! Dawn States: Lavender hot cocoa is amazing! dstates@yorklibraries.org

Food Science! Caramels!

This was a popular science with the teens and a great program for the fall!
Caramel science is easy to set up, just find a good caramel recipe, gather the supplies, and taste test some caramel! (This is completely necessary to the science)
With caramel, there are some really great scientific aspects to cover. These include:

• Caramelization
• Different stages of candy
• How temperature effects the process
• The reason caramels are that color
• Adding sea salt to the finished candy and what that does
• The chemical reactions happening in the heating of the sugar

Adding sea salt to the finished candy was really a cool step, because the teens all thought it would ruin the candy! After explaining that salt can actually enhance flavors and comparing adding sea salt to chocolate covered pretzels and the balance of sweet and salty, they were okay with adding sea salt. This also opened up an interesting discussion about taste buds and how that works and they got to try something new. After a taste test between regular and salted caramels, most preferred the caramels with sea salt!

Here are some good links for caramels!

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/recipe-caramels.html

http://chemconfections.blogspot.com/2011/01/caramel-delicious-science-experiment.html

 

 

Dawn States: sea salt caramels are the best...because...SCIENCE!

 

Questions? Email me or leave a comment! dstates@yorklibraries.org

Poet Tea Part 2

I would like to talk about some amazing poets who took time out of their day to come to Poet Tea Tuesday and really spend time interacting with the teens. It was so awesome to see the teens open up to these poets and be encouraged by them! (It is also National Poetry Month, so hopefully this is inspiring for you!)

Christine Lincoln was one of these amazing poets who came to share and do poetry with the teens. (http://yorkcity.org/poet-laureate)  (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Poet-Laureate-of-York-2014/1434727086770646) She was the one who actually contacted the library when she heard of Poet Tea Tuesday, and because of her there were some amazing connections made! She is truly a wonderful poet and person, and it was great to have her involved with the teens!

Dustin Nispel was another poet who took time to come to the library for Poet Tea Tuesday, share his work, and speak about what got him into poetry. (http://denpoetry.com/) This was a fantastic and inspiring experience for many of the teens. Dustin is a spoken word poet, something I freely admit that I cannot do, so having him here exposed the teens to a side of poetry I could not present. One of the teens in the group who was usually really quiet opened up to Dustin about his writing and asked him lots of questions. It turns out he was interested in spoken word too, something I did not know!

Here is what I learned from this experience and what I would like to share with you:

• First, find and connect with the local poets in your area. They are out there! Many times the library is a great platform for them to share their work, and it can be a mind-opening experience for your teens.

• Secondly, recognize your poetry strengths and weaknesses. Haiku not your thing? Really love limericks? Ballads bore you? Find someone else who loves these things if you really feel passionately about sharing them with your teens. I really wanted teens to experience spoken word but I do not do spoken word, but there usually is someone around who can and is willing to share their passion. Reach out and connect with them! (If you do not like poetry at all, but feel that poetry is something that the teens need, see if you can find someone else to run the program. If not, do a few pop-up poetry events and leave it at that. Find something else that you and your teens can connect on passionately...short stories anyone?)

• Lastly, encourage the poets and the teens to open up with each other and ask questions! Be sure to thank the poets for their time, and allow the program to take a natural course. Let the poets know an outline of what you would like them to talk about or do, but do not plan out every minute of the interaction. If you need to help things move along, do so, but let the teens really have a chance to talk to the poets! Great things can happen this way!

Dawn States: Poetry is great! Do you have a favorite poet? Leave a comment!
Questions? Send me an email dstates@yorklibraries.org

Poet Tea Tuesday

I am very passionate about poetry and its ability to move and connect people. Every year at the library where I work, there is a poetry contest. Children and teens are able to enter their poetry and then they are able to come read their poetry at the event. It is a really amazing event that I got to witness this year. In preparation and leading up to the event, it seemed like a good idea to have some poetry nights with the teens until the poetry contest. This would help them realize that they too can write poetry and have a piece to enter into the contest, and it would make poetry fun and accessible to them. Because of this, Poet Tea Tuesdays came about!

The idea for Poet Tea Tuesday is simple: have hot water, tea,  and hot cocoa and then provide an active or passive type of poetry for the teens to do. This is a great program for colder months, because the teens can show up, write a poem, get something warm to drink and hang out and discuss their poems.

Since I think poetry is awesome at any time, here are some ideas to get a similar program started!

Poetry Cubes: Find a simple paper box template, add images and words, and then have the teens cut them out and assemble the boxes. Roll the box, and whatever image or word appears they have to include it in a poem or write a poem about it.

Post-it note Poetry: I really like this one! Have the teens all write a poem on a post-it note. To keep it interesting, provide different sizes and colors of post-it notes. They can then post the poem on a wall of the library. (Encourage library appropriate language, most teens do this anyway if the idea is already in place. Also, if they are comfortable with you, they will share their poetry work and you can double check that it is appropriate. I did not really worry about this too much, I appreciate expression, and my advice is to put up the library appropriate ones, but if a teen writes something that isn't have them take that one home and write another one for the library. Look at that you just got a teen to write two poems instead of one! Hurrah!)

Last idea, and stay tuned for more: Magnetic poetry! Provide a kit and several metal objects and let the teens create! Think of the largest metal thing that is in the library that you can provide for the teens (book cart, chair, bookshelf, refrigerator maybe not so much) and let them make a poem on that. I had some really amazing poems from this session, from cat poems (yay!) to really deep poetry all from those magnetic word kits. They are more than just magnets!

What is your favorite poem or poet? Leave a comment!
Dawn states: poetry is awesome! dstates@yorklibraries.org

Food Science: Chocolate!

Chocolate is one of those foods that conjures a lot of memories, associations, and myths. Therefore it was a great choice for doing some science! The science part of this food science was pretty simple. The teens took a chip of dark, milk, and white chocolate and observed how fast each of these various types of chocolate melted. One set was kept at room temperature, one was held in their hand, and one they held on their tongue to see which type of chocolate melted first under all three conditions.

The next made a double-boiler and observed what temperature chocolate melts at, how to temper chocolate (the stage that chocolate is made into awesome good looking candy instead of a splotchy mess.), and why chocolate is melted so precisely instead of just boiling it.

After they have a pan of melted and tempered chocolate, the teens were then able to make their own unique chocolate pops and try out some different flavors! They tried nearly everything, in fact one chocolate lollipop was just all the toppings. I was told it was delicious...

The more complicated and myth-busting part of the chocolate science came with the chocolate quiz. The quiz had such questions as:
True or False: Even though it doesn't kill them, cats will also eat chocolate, just like dogs.
Answer: False. Nah. They can't taste sweet things. It is probably also bad for cats, but cats don't eat chocolate and humans can't make them. Do anything. Ever.
And: True or False: Chocolate has more than 350 known chemicals in it.
Answer: True. Chocolate has 380 chemicals in it...that we currently know of.

If anyone would like this quiz, a supply list, or to know more about the process of tempering chocolate, send me an email at: dstates@yorklibraries.org

Here is a question for everyone else, leave your answer in the comments! (No looking up the answer either! :p)

True or False: Chocolate was first consumed in bar form.

Dawn states: Dark chocolate is the best.

Root Beer Science!

Here is another of my favorite food science programs! It is so much fun and really simple to gather teens together over root beer floats! No pictures this time, but I can email anyone who is interested the set of experiments I put together! I can also provide supply lists to those interested! Also, there will be a link explaining nucleation, which is the reaction that happens when things like sugar or ice cream are added to root beer.

Have teens group together, wash their hands (super important in food science!) Then have them go from station to station of the root beer float science. Setting up in stations is the easiest if there are multiple experiments involved in the food science. They can work in pairs if that is easier. The experiments we highlighted in this food science were vegetable oil and sugar in a cup with root beer, milk in root beer, a root beer float with ice cream added first then root beer and then the other way, and then dropping pennies in root beer to see what will happen. Lastly, everyone got to make a non-experimental root beer float!  (YAY!)

The teens learned a lot from these experiments, such as which way is the best way to make a root beer float without over fizzing and what nucleation is. Food science opens up all of these discussions and makes it easy to talk to the teens about what is happening in these experiments.

Here is the link to nucleation! There is more out there to look at, but this is a good starting place. http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-nucleation.htm
Here are the guys that inspired the root beer float science, but I did not do this because it seemed like a bigger mess than I wanted to deal with. http://www.eepybird.com/featured-video/coke-and-mentos-featured-video/science-of-coke-mentos/
Here is another inspiration for soda science! http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/invisible-soda

Dawn states: never add pennies to root beer floats!

When was the last time you had a root beer float? Comment and let me know!