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Special project days delight kids
The Summer Reading Program has brought in a slew of activities for the local children who have signed up for the annual program.
The Mountain Home Public Library hosts a weeklong series of events that includes a Movie Day on both Monday and Thursday, Tech Day on Tuesday, Craft Day on Wednesday and Science Day on Friday.
On Wednesday, the children took part in Craft Day by folding origami. The kids were split into two groups (children second grade and under and older children).
The younger children folded figures of cats, while the older children were folding things such as cups, hats, cubes and some unique things like samurai helmets and peace doves.
During Craft Day, the library featured a "Green Village" display made by several of the program members out of such items as construction paper, egg cartons, paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls and tissue boxes.
The children were in high spirits during Craft Day.
"I really liked it. I enjoy being able to make so many things out of paper," said 11-year-old John J. Ferguson.
"I'm having fun, learning how to make cups, birds and cubes. It's cool to learn how to do that," said 12-year-old Shaun Holland.
"I think it is very educational, to do these activities because you get to learn so many things," said 10-year-old Haley Link.
On Friday, the library hosted Science Day, where over 30 Mountain Home youths took part in random experiments taken from the book, "Smash It, Crash It, Launch It: 50 Mind Blowing, Eye Popping Science Experiments."
First, the children worked to create their own flying marshmallow machine made from a clothespin, a tongue depressor, a small scrap of wood, a plastic bottle cap and, of course, marshmallows.
"We hoped that they learn something from this, besides having fun," said Library Director Luise House.
Once the children created their machines, chaos ensued, as they began to shoot their marshmallows not only at the posted targets in the library's meeting room but at each other.
"It's really awesome. I liked building the catapult, because it was fun," said 8-year-old Owen Ostberg.
"Today has been really fun and we're just all having fun firing marshmallows at each other," said 8-year-old Alexis Walker.
After the marshmallow flying machine, House demonstrated to the children the "Exploding Marshmallow" and the "Sparking Grapes" experiments.
The Exploding Marshmallow involved taking one or several marshmallows and placing them in a microwave, where the marshmallows didn't melt, but expanded.
After that experiment, House asked each of the children, both young and old, to make the following promise: "I will not blow up a marshmallow in my parent's microwave."
The Sparking Grapes experiment involved taking a green grape, splitting it in half and placing it in a microwave. The goal of the experiment is that when a grape is cooked in a microwave, sparks begin to fly.
House demonstrated each of the experiments, while the children watched in awe at the sight of the blown up marshmallows or the sparks coming from the grapes.
Due to a limited budget, librarian Luise House requests that parents of the children sign their kids up on Monday for both the Craft Day and Science Fair, to make sure the right amount of material are available.
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