On October 15th, the Library will be kicking off a brand new, three week stretch entitled “Making A Monster”. We will have a variety of programs aimed at children and teens focusing on both the light and dark sides of medicine. We will discuss how good people can use ethical behavior and cutting edge technology to save lives, and how that technology can be abused.
The library will be purchasing some awesome new tools to help us with these programs. We will be purchasing a new 3d printer, which will allow us to create nearly anything you could dream up! We’ll also be purchasing some Hummingbird Duo Arduinos. These are small, programmable computer boards that be connected to a variety of motors, sensors, and other fun gadgets to let us create robots or monsters! We’ll also be buying a lot of books to help us refresh our nonfiction sections for both children and teens. There will be a lot of new books about health and wellness. Regarding not just how the different parts of our bodies operate, but also how young people can take steps to care for their bodies through healthy eating and exercise.
Our programs will take place primarily on Monday and Tuesday nights. On Mondays, we will have a couple of Teen programs starting at 5:30p. We will have our Teen Advisory Board, a group for teens that meets weekly and discusses library and community issues, followed at 6:30p by a fun program. Some of the things we’ll be doing include making short green screen videos, looking at the gross ways that doctors used to treat patients, and how 3d printing and other emerging technologies are revolutionizing medicine. These will run roughly an hour to 7:30p.
On Tuesdays, we’ll have programs for both children and teens starting at 6:00p and running to 7:00p. This way, entire families can come out and have some fun! For the kids, we have Mad ScienceTime. This is a fun storytime hosted by our resident Mad Doctor Diana, who will share some of her favorite silly, spooky stories, and lead everyone in a super fun science experiment! For the teens in the family, we will have a program entitled Monster Workshop. Here, our group will attempt the unthinkable.. .we are going to build a monster! Now don’t worry. We won’t be stitching our Frankenstein’s Monster out of dead bodies. We will make ours out of craft materials, 3d printed parts, and the new Arduinos.
We also have a few more activities for our younger guests outside of these. On Saturday, October 20th, from 10 to 11am, Tonya Short from the Purdue Extension will host a class for parents with very young children called Block Party. It will be informal, fun, and super useful to learn how to make even playing with blocks educational to your little one! The following Saturday, the 27th, at the same time, we will have Tonya back to talk about how bodies work and let the kids play with our new Velcro organ aprons, which should be a lot of fun! The next Monday, the 29th, Amy Blake will host a program in the Youth Department entitled “How To Be A Mad Scientist”. She will talk about how scientists work, and then everyone will get to do some silly experiments!
This initiative is being sponsored by a grant from Indiana Humanities called Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap is a grant program designed to promote the crossover between the humanities (philosophy, art, history, etc.) and the sciences (math, engineering, medicine, etc.) This grant is made possible through funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
