Explore the World: Magnets

In response to the STEAM movement (and with great thanks to such great inspiration & encouragement from colleagues: Amy, Abby, and Kendra), this past fall I started a STEAM storytime series at the library. This is primarily aimed at preschoolers and their families, registration open to ages 3-7 in our library.

Books & Group Activities

Opening Activity
Building blocks from Kendra.
“Building Blocks”
(Tune of Good Night Ladies)
Hello ________
Hello ________
Hello ________
Come build something with your blocks!

Books

A Look at Magnets by Barbara Alpert
Push and Pull! Learn About Magnets by Julia Vogel

I shared just a few books today about magnets. I think the best thing that I did was use two magnets for a demonstration where I invited each child up to feel the push and pull of the magnets. I also did a special magnet board with “Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons” which I got from Anne’s Library Life. While I did the story, I didn’t let the kids see what I was doing and once I had finished telling the story, I turned the board around and let them see the “magic”.

Once we finished the group portion, it was time to move to the station activities.

Station Activities

Before I run down the activity stations, I do want to highlight the products I did wind up purchasing for this program: Magnet Mania Science Kit & Super Magnet Classroom Lab Kit.

Buried Treasure
There are our dishpans again, ha! I buried all of counting chips in some sand from our sand art surplus. The kids used the magnet wands to uncover buried treasure. They also had a great time chaining their counting chips and trying to build the longest chain of chips. I overheard some great conversations about why the chips had magnetic properties when touching the magnet wands from some of the parents!

Magnetic Fishing
I used our Lakeshore Learning set and just let the kids go to town fishing for letters. What I really enjoyed were the interactions and cooperative play that I saw with the kids as they worked together to find the letters to spell their names.

Marble Painting
The biggest undertaking I’ve ever done before. I actually had two of our pages come downstairs with me specifically to supervise this station. I found out all the instructions for this program at Let’s Explore, via Abby the Librarian. Our set-up involved large oval paper plates and some recycled tape rolls to prop them up. To make this an easier station, I pre-cut wax paper sheets that the kids could keep their shapes on and so the pages could easily re-set each paint station for another kid quickly without too much mess.

Magnet Exploration
This was an easy station — I put out all the extra magnets and supplies from the kits and let the kids play. I had quite a few kids that were fascinated with the pull/push aspects and spent a lot of time reversing the polarities to push magnets around the table.

Crazy Hair Station
This station came from Abby at Abby the Librarian and I just absolutely loved it from the very beginning. It was probably the station that I was most looking forward to! Luckily, the kids loved it too. I have a lot of great pictures with their smiling faces and their magnet crazy hair creations. Super simple to cut up some pipe cleaners — I did use the skinny ones, with less fuzz. This is absolutely the station that kids kept coming back to over and over again for one last crazy hair creation!

Take-Home Activities

Since there are not a ton of books for the preschool age on magnets and magnetism, I did skip the display this time around. Instead, I handed out small baggies with supplies to test magnetism at home. I also handed out these take-home packets as they left. Inside there’s an activity page and a coloring page.

Feel free to pin whatever pictures you want, but I did make another Pinterest friendly collage!

Coming soon…Size Science and Snow Science!