2013 Book Blurt Review

Most Read Book Blurt of 2013


First Book Blurt of 2013

 
Last Book Blurt of 2013

 
My Favorite Book of 2013

3D Printing: Guess What We Just Got!?!?

At the beginning of last year, I put up a post about 3D Printing. Now, I'm so excited to say that the Community Library Network actually has a 3D Printer!!

As I mentioned in our Cardboard Robots post, the Community Library Network has been a part of a Makerspace pilot project with the Idaho Commission for Libraries. The final piece of this pilot was each library (or network) taking home a 3D Printer to call their own.

Now, there are a lot of different 3D Printer models, and there are also a ton of 3D Printer vendors. For our printers, the Commission decided to contract with an open-source building community called RepRap, and more specifically a Boise shop called the Reuseum.

RepRap is based on the idea of self-replicating manufacturing machines. So, each of our printers was hand-made, and many of the elements were actually printed on another 3D printer. Pretty cool, right?

Obviously there are multiple ways of manufacturing things using 3D Printers, and some of the industrial grade operate slightly different than ours. But, ours basically melts a plastic filament and then uses a nozzle to lay it back down layer after layer until a physical object is created.

Feel free to check out the video, or join us for our 3D Printer Demos we'll be doing to start off the new year =D

Our Hunger Games: Catching Fire Party

With the success of our Hunger Games Party last year, we couldn't resist doing a follow-up event when Catching Fire came out =D We featured some different activities, had a ton of people come down, and had a grand-old time. For those keeping score, many of my ideas came from the pins on my Pinterest Board, Hunger Games Party!!

Find Your Hunger Games Name

We wouldn't be able to start our event without knowing who we were, so we figured out what our "Hunger Games" names would be. We used one of those templates where you take pieces of your own name, throw in some funny sounding words, and wind up with a unique nomenclature. I'm Senpetra M. Standoak if you're wondering, and we used this picture from CatchMyParty as our template.

District Emblems

After we had our names we chose our district emblems. Bouncing by Michael's I found some small wooden discs we used as a back, printed out these district emblems, and then mod podged them together. Our finishing touch was self-adhesive clasps (that I also found at Michael's). This activity was inspired by g*rated.

Sustenance

Our tributes wouldn't have lasted long without some sustenance, so we had a crackers, cheese, and fruit spread,  served Arizona Iced Tea (because its delicious and seemed like a modern way to survive when you need energy lol), and also decorated Camouflage Cookies (granted, Peeta does more camouflaging in the first book, but the Morphlings do it in the second book, so I figured we were still legit).

DIY Bow and Arrows 

Once our introductions were out of the way, it was time for weapons training. One of our teen
members does some Live-Action Roll Playing (LARPing) in Spokane, WA, and he wanted to demonstrate the safety bow and arrows they use during combat. After his demonstration, we gave tributes a chance to make their own.

Inspired by this blog post from Sophie's World, we wound up using CPVC pipe I purchased at Lowe's for the bows themselves, and used bamboo stakes as the arrows. I was planning on using the bamboo for the bows, but they were too brittle. If you're going to do this activity, I would suggest using some of the elements from this Instructables (like cutting notches in the pipe to hold the string better).

The Arena

Finally, we actually had our tributes turn their skill and wiles against each other. Now don't panic too much. We didn't actually fight each other. We modified a game of Assassin to give it a more Hunger Games feel. We had everyone write a number on a piece of paper, and then they wore that number on a name tag. Every tribute drew a number that someone else wrote down, and that was the target they were tying to eliminate. As soon as they eliminated their target, they moved onto the tribute their target was targeting.

Instead of using Nerf weapons, we had everyone wear a construction paper bracelet secured with a single piece of tape. You eliminated your target by removing their bracelet (without touching any part of your target besides their bracelet, which leveled the playing field nicely). In keeping with the Hunger Games, after several eliminations we changed the rules so you could target anyone, not just the number you were assigned.

Mockingjay

I'm wondering what kind of fun we can have for the Mockingjay Pt. 1 debut...hhmmmm...