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Neighbors | Zack Shively.The families that attended the "I love STEAM" program could check out books relating to science, technology, engineering, arts or mathematics at the library.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively.The art station at the Austintown library's "I love STEAM" event allowed children to paint a canvas and peel a cover in the center of the canvas to reveal a white heart shape in the middle of the painting.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively.The "I Love STEAM" program had a Valentine's Day theme to it since the holdiay was just two days after the event. An example of this theme is the engineering station where children used gummy hearts and toothpicks to make sculptures.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively.The Austintown library had an "I love STEAM" program on Feb. 12. Pictured, librarian Nikki Puhalla observed a child's science experiment where she placed a candy heart in water to see how it reacted.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively.STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. Librarian Nikki Puhalla set up a station for each component of STEAM. Pictured, she helps an attendee with decoding a secret message.
By ZACK SHIVELY
The Austintown library gave children a chance to use their knowledge for some creative activities at the library’s “I Love to STEAM“ program on Feb. 12.
Librarian Nikki Puhalla organized the STEAM night. She gave the program a Valentine’s Day theme since the holiday occurred two days later.
STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. Puhalla set up a table and at least one activity for each component of STEAM.
The science table game the attendees an experiment to do. The students poured water, clear soda and vinegar into separate cups and placed a hard heart-shaped candy in each to see what happened differently in each cups. One child noted that the heart floated in the soda, but not the other two. The children all looked at the rate in which the candy dissolved in each container.
The children decoded at the technology table. Puhalla had worksheets with coded messages that the children solved using a grid key or a number code. The grid key used two columns, one of number and the other letters, to represent a certain letter. The number code simply had numbers stand for the letters based on where they fell in the alphabet. For example, 2 stood for “B“ and 14 stood for “N.“
They used these code keys to decipher the coded messages. The messages dealt with love and Valentine’s Day; for example, one message read, “I love you.“
The engineering station had toothpicks and gummy candy hearts. The children placed the toothpicks in the candies to connect them and make three dimensional art.
The “Heart Art“ table gave children canvases with a heart-shaped plastic material in the center. The children painted the full canvas different colors and pulled the material off at the end, leaving a white heart in the center of a painted canvas.
The mathematics station had a puzzle and a match game. The puzzle, for older children, asked the attendees if they could arrange 20 small triangle pieces into the shape of a heart. The match game, for younger children, asked the children to match a written out number with a numeric representation. For example, a matching pair was “three” and “3.”
Puhalla helped the children with anything they needed during the event. She also displayed books relating to STEAM for families to check out from the library.