LEGO Robotics

This was Week 3 of Robotics Club, hosted at the Gordon-Nash Library by New Hampton School students who are presently part of their school's Robotics program. Here's Ashley (and Ben in the background), explaining the parts of the robot to groups of New Hampton Community School students. 

Kids are learning to program the robot using Scratch on an iPad. NHS students set up simple challenges for them as they learned the program and the capabilities of their robots. 

Moving the robot from a start line to a finish. 

A race to the finish. 

Man-made (kid-made) tunnels to go through on the way to the finish line. 

We have four more weeks of Robotics! Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday!

How do you make the 200 year New Hampton School Bicentennial relevant to kids? It's a BIRTHDAY!

For our special Bicentennial Storytime, we read Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Denise Fleming. It's a story about Jack, a poor but clever boy who finds creative ways to bake a birthday cake for the Princess's birthday. He runs into all sorts of obstacles on his way to deliver the cake to the Royal Party, and his gift does not arrive as planned. But, being the clever person he is, Jack finds a way to make everything right by the time he meets the Princess. 

After the story, we made Birthday Crowns for a craft, colored with crayons and markers and festooned with spangles and pompoms, stars and stickers.

When we were finished, we celebrated with Birthday Cupcakes. Happy Birthday, New Hampton School!

LEGO Club: Building a Box

January's LEGO Club began with partial readings of two picture books - The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli, featuring an imaginative child with a carton, and The Mud Flat Mystery by James Stevenson, about neighbors' curiosity when a large box is delivered to a vacationing friend's house. Both stories were precursors to this month's LEGO challenge: to build a box that could open and close.

Mr. Dowal had sorted out the moveable LEGO bricks that could serve as hinges and, for those interested, demonstrated how a box could be built by using plates. Kids made their own MOCs, some with boxes and some without. Many are on display in the cases at the back of the library. 

Again, several New Hampton School students joined us for the fun! Thanks for visiting with us and for being good role models for younger kids! 

LEGO Club: Building with Slopes

LEGO Club this month was again fun and very well-attended. We had some extra helpers come over from the New Hampton School to help out and join the fun. 

Mr. Dowal worked with kids who wanted to learn how slope blocks could be used in building. There were several builders who used their new knowledge to build their "mocs" (my own creation). 

Here are some of the other mocs that were created in this session. 

Look! One clever builder found a LEGO magnifying glass among the bricks! So we had fun taking pictures with it in front of the camera's lens. See?  

Touch-a-Truck!

Trucks and emerency vehicles, and the people who operate them! The most exciting part of the evening was when the fire truck got called to go to a fire, right in the middle of our program! The firefighter even hit the siren on the way out!

Thanks to all who donated vehicles and volunteered their time. It was a great night! Watch below!

NHS Service Day at Gordon-Nash

Yesterday, six students from New Hampton School, as part of a service project, spent their day at the library helping out with several tasks. First, they investigated different ways of making paper plate dinosaurs, and each made one as a model craft to share with Storytime participants.

When children arrived, the students helped with with Thursday Storytime by reading dinosaur stories and talking with kids about what was happening in the books. Here are the books they each read - 

After that, they helped each young patron make the paper plate dinosaur of their choosing. Students helped as children cut, glued, and created a dinosaur with tissue paper, construction paper, crayons, and brads for movable legs. 

After lunch, NHS Huskies went through the juvenile shelves in the children's room, looking at books and suggesting titles to be removed. Then they moved downstairs and organized discarded children's books for a Book Sale. The room is beautifully organized and it looks great!

Sincere thanks to these fine young people from the New Hampton School. Your help is much appreciated and we hope you will return to the Gordon-Nash again very soon!

New Hampton School Guest Readers

At Storytime yesterday, we had some very special visitors. Students from the Public Speaking class at The New Hampton School, along with their teacher Joe Sampson, came over to the library to be guest readers. Each student had previously come to choose a picture book and had practiced their presentation. In all, eight stories were read to a rapt audience.

Afterward, we decorated pumpkin shapes with fall and Halloween stickers. A thick or thin brown paper rectangle was added for a stem. 

Thanks to New Hampton School students for a unique and fun Storytime!