On Friday August 14th we made videogames using Scratch. Our games were based on the infamous “Flappy Bird” videogame that brought its creators notoriety and established them in the halls of memorable bad game design forever 🙂 We followed a tutorial I created and chose new sprites for our flappy […]
Playing records with no electricity!
Published on :Monday’s hands-on science program, “The Science Behind Recording Music,” challenged tweens to come up with several iterations of a gramophone that could play the sound stored on a vinyl record with only their hands to power it. First tweens learned about the history of sound recording and its great inventors, then we […]
eStorytime – Airplanes
Published on :For our July eStorytime we shared apps and stories all about airplanes! These might be a great choice to help prep your preschoolers if you are going to take a flight soon! Apps We Shared To get everyone excited about airplanes we spent some time looking at real plane photos […]
The Science of Making Music
Published on :This afternoon we had a program at Pasadena Library about how to make a musical instrument–something that would produce not just noise, but definite pitches that you could change or manipulate. We learned about aerophones, chordophones, idiophones and membranophones, and then got a chance to make our own DIY instruments. […]
Tablets and Tech for Kids: an iPad toys open house!
Published on :We had a fun tech program for kids yesterday, a kind of open house for the iPad apps and toys we have acquired! We played with Wonder Workshop robots and Osmo game systems, toys that extend the two-dimensional screen of the iPad to three-dimensional play. Kids and parents had a lot […]
Family Makerspace
Published on :Families spent an afternoon at the library tinkering and creating. We set up several drop in stations with LittleBits, 3D printing pens, Rainbow Looms, and Legos. The 3D printing pens extrude heated plastic filament that cools almost instantly into a solid, stable structure. You can draw up into the […]
LittleBits Workshop
Published on :What are littleBits? littleBits is an open source library of discrete electronic components pre-assembled in tiny circuit boards. All logic and circuitry is pre-engineered in the bits. This pushes up the design process. Basically, a person who has little knowledge of electronics can now design something using electronics. The purpose […]
Shopping & Market – eStorytime
Published on :For our eStorytime today we visited the market and did some shopping! Apps We Shared With our first book, A Day in the Market story by May Tobias-Papa, illustrated by Isabel Roxas from Adarna house (iOS: $2.99; Android Free) we took a trip around the world to the Philippines. With the […]
Cats – eStorytime
Published on :We held our second eStorytime here at the Children’s Room today and had a blast with apps and stories about cats. If you missed the fun here, try some of these apps out on the iPads in the Children’s Room, or download them to share with your child at home. […]
Scratch 101, Friday August 1
Published on :We made more great Scratch projects last Friday as ten kids between the ages of 10-18 came to the library to learn how to create an interactive animated “talk show.” They learned programming concepts and created sequences of events that a computer could execute so that it looked like characters […]