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Libraries offer hands-on science fun for kids
YOUNGSTOWN
Local public-library officials hope children make the link between literacy and science through free, hands-on after-school and summer science programs in libraries.
“Children need background in math and science as well as literacy, so science is becoming more and more a part of library programming,” said Josephine Nolfi, manager of children’s services for the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.
“We want to draw them in with things that are fun and interesting as well as educational,” said Janet Loew, communications and public-relations director.
“Reading and books are directly connected to science and math, and it can all be a lot of fun when we put it all together,” said Joy Angelo, children’s librarian at the main library.
Wearing a white lab coat, Angelo recently conducted an after-school program concerning the properties of water for kindergarten through sixth-grade children at the main library.
Angelo, a former math and English teacher, exuded enthusiasm; and she learned and used the names of the 12 children attending the program.
Angelo guided the children through a series of experiments, taught them scientific vocabulary, including the word “hypothesis,” and led them to the proper conclusions by asking them questions.
At one of the stations, she gave participants a small plastic bag containing a rock, a bead, a pencil, a rubber band, a paper clip, a crayon, a puff ball and a piece of a sponge.
She asked the children to form a hypothesis, in which they would predict which items would float or sink when they placed them in a water tray, and then see what would actually occur.
The children learned that the rocks and glass beads sank; plastic beads and the sponge fragment floated; and puff balls floated until they became waterlogged, then sank. They learned that some of the paper clips and rubber bands floated because of surface tension on the water.
“They have very nice programming for the children here,” said Sharon Cross of Columbiana, who homeschools her children.
“It puts an educational experience in a really fun environment. They don’t even realize how much they’re learning,” she said of her sons and the science program. Angelo “has a talent for working with the kids. She knows how to get them excited about learning, and that’s why we come here, and she’s so gentle and so patient,” Cross said.
Cross brought her three sons, Louis, 3, Dominic, 5, and Scott, 8, to the program. All the boys wore identical “I dig Tyranosaurus” dinosaur shirts given to them as gifts by an aunt.
“I like science. I want to be a paleontologist when I grow up. ... I want to dig for dinosaur bones,” Scott said. Scott said he most enjoyed the liquid-rainbow exercise. “You got to mix colors and make a liquid rainbow,” he said.
In the liquid-rainbow exercise, Angelo asked the children to predict, or make a hypothesis, as to which liquids would settle in which order in a jar.
From bottom to top, in descending order of weight, the liquid rainbow consisted of corn syrup, dishwashing liquid, water, corn oil and rubbing alcohol.
Also displayed in the meeting room, where the program was conducted, was a collection of children’s science books concerning the properties of water, which the children and their parents could borrow from the library to reinforce the program’s lessons at home.
“Children are constantly learning about science in everyday life, and the library does anything it can to support learning at all levels for kids of all ages,” Nolfi concluded.