BONNYVILLE – The Bonnyville Municipal Library is offering boxes that are filled with items that will help youths to critically and creatively think, problem solve, collaborate, and innovate through themed activities.
The local branch launched their Brain Boxes at the beginning of March after receiving funds from the Bonnyville and District FCSS. The Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) themed kits were created to reach the middle aged dynamic with the hope of sparking an interest in a subject they may not have been able to explore too thoroughly before.
According to program manager Kat Eliason, the inspiration came from Literacy Kits the library currently offers to patrons.
“The little bags are for small children and we took that idea and we said ‘we’d really like to do something for those middle grades because that’s really where you want to reignite the spark in something that might inform their future career path.’ Then we thought ‘okay, what can we do that will be interesting and exciting?’ We jumped on the STEAM idea and then just brainstormed some specific themes to fit within that.”
There are a total of seven boxes that are available to be checked out for three weeks. When one is returned, it is put into quarantine before being put back on the shelf for the next person.
The kits are only available to those who have a library card specifically from the Bonnyville facility, which encompasses residents within the Town and MD of Bonnyville, along with Kehewin Cree Nation.
One of the reasons STEAM was chosen as the theme for this initiative was to get people thinking about how many concepts are related to one another and are used in everyday life.
“What does art have to do with science? The library manager Leah (Woodford) was telling me about (people) at NASA, when they're trying to figure out how to get the parachutes into the modular units to land, they’re using origami to influence how they’re folding these things,” Eliason detailed. “There’s that artistic (aspect), but if you look at origami, then there’s angles and things that are informed. It’s all connected and it’s kind of a buzzword right now but I think it’s one of those things that will last. The whole STEAM theory will last because it really speaks to how all of those things are integrated into daily life. Engineering isn’t its own standalone thing and math isn’t its own standalone thing either.”
While the kits were designed with a pre-to-early-teens demographic in mind, Eliason said anyone is more than welcome to check them out when they’re available.
“Adults that want to play with the Snap Circuits can take them home, or families with younger kids can take them and use them, just supervise younger children with them. They’re a really fun way to look at those bigger-picture concepts that might be trickier to digest and a nice way to supplement what they might be doing in school, or maybe they see a bit of a spark of an interest in a certain topic. This would be a good way to further that or to see if that interest is as strong as they think.”
The themes for the boxes include music, electricity, astronomy, brain puzzles, and Rube Goldberg machines. A stand out for Eliason is the Rube Goldberg kit, which she described as "finding the most interesting way to solve a problem."
“Like wanting to pour a glass of water. What’s the most interesting or elaborate way you can do that? It gets the creative problem-solving (started) and... thinking outside the box of how to answer this question, and they’re super fun,” she exclaimed, adding all of the boxes include activities meant to get the user thinking about the bigger picture of how objects work.
“The two (kits) based around electricity have these really cool things called Snap Circuits in them where you sort of snap together some electrical circuits and understand how electricity works and moves. That’s small scale, but then you can get people thinking on the large scale like ‘oh, this is how my thermostat knows to kick in at my house.’"
Anyone interested in trying out any of the STEAM Kits can call the Bonnyville library at 780-826-3071 to put one on hold, or stop in to see which one seems most interesting.
