Our Wibbly Wobbly Doctor Who Party

Just in case you couldn't tell from my Pinterest board, I love Doctor Who! All the whovians who attended our Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Doctor Who Party apparently also share my affection for our favorite Time Lord =D
If you would like more information on any of these activities, you can check out the Program Outline I put together for our Youth Services Resource page.

Snacks
Adipose Marshmallows (I must admit, I had to look the Adipose up...)
Apples with Faces (we just used some plastic knives to carve the faces)
Fishsticks and Custard (pound cake rolled in butter, dipped in Vanilla pudding)
Arizona Iced Tea (or you could brew some actual tea to be more authentic)

Crafts/Activities 
Duct Tape Bow Tie (because bow ties are cool)
Sonic Screwdriver Pens (because your night wouldn't be complete with some whirring sound effects)
Tardis Cubee Folding Craft (printing these on cardstock would probably work best)
Gallifreyan Nametags (use the spiffy application to print customized nametags)

Games
Weeping Angel Tag (use a flashlight to stop those Weeping Angels in their tracks)
Weeping Angel Tag Alternate (point to make them stop, run when the gamemaster says "Blink")
Empty Child Tag (don't let those empty children touch you)
Doctor Who Matching Game (The Doctors, their catchphrases, popular companions, and baddies)

Gelatin Printing: Making Some Legit Posters

So I originally found this idea on Pinterest, but it comes from the blog of Cassie Stephens. Long story short, you make a batch of unflavored gelatin, you put ink on the gelatin, put some leaves on top of the ink, and when you put paper on top of that, you get a cool silhouette poster because the leaves don't let the ink get to some parts of the paper.

Originally I was going to do that exact idea, but then I started thinking that the participants might want to create their own silhouettes. So, I gave them some paper, stencils and scissors, and let them create the shapes we applied to the gelatin.

Cassie suggested a printmaking brayer to spread the ink, but we found we could also spread the ink using a ruler. You can obviously buy printing ink at a craft store, but we had library stamp replacement ink available, and that seemed to work.

P.S. When you are planning your shapes, be aware of their orientation. It'll wind up as an inverted image when it is applied to the paper, as our LIZARD poster attests to. The top image is what the poster looked like, and the bottom image is the shape we applied to the gelatin.

Awesome Monster Bookmarks

I'm really thankful for awesome coworkers who find awesome ideas, and for awesome people who share their awesome ideas online =D

Miss Lauren does a monthly Open Crafts event, and in her searchings for the perfect craft, she stumbled across Monster Bookmarks. As you can tell from the picture, their awesomeness goes without saying (and Miss Lauren's awesomeness for finding them goes without saying as well).

Tally's Treasury is a DIY and crafting idea blog that gets updated every Thursday with new projects. Just bouncing around I found some awesome things to make (like a ping pong eyeball headband, and DIY Glasses and Moustache Disguise) , and she has instructions and a template for the Monster Bookmarks available on the blog as well. 

An awesome (how many more times can I use that word in this post) thing about this activity is that it is really simple to do, and lets the kids create something that makes it easier to read. Have a great time while promoting literacy? Yes, please!

In addition to promoting literacy, the kids that came for this activity were inspired to create their own bookmark designs as well. They might have been simple, but the kids really enjoyed having the freedom to create something from scratch.

Glow in the Dark Experiments

Who doesn't like stuff that glows, and I figured it was appropriate for Halloween :)

Glow Sticks

An easy way to get glowing is glow sticks. Basically it is a chemical reaction between two compounds that, when mixed, release excess energy as light. If you are interested, it is a process called chemiluminescence.I found that the kids understood the idea of a chemical reaction if you talk about mixing baking soda and vinegar, as most have done that.

Once we understood a little more about chemical reactions, I actually cut open one of the glow sticks. Each glow stick is actually made of two sticks; one plastic one that you feel, and one glass one that is lodged inside. When you crack a glow stick you are actually breaking the inner glass tube that releases one chemical into the other and presto, instant light!

Glow Paint

Let your participants paint a design on a black piece of paper without telling them that it is glow in the dark paint. Once they are finished, turn off the lights and watch their surprise. Once they've seen the affect, you can talk about the science behind it called photoluminescence (the paint absorbs photons and then releases them in the dark is the short answer hehe. Another way of thinking about it is the paint getting excited and then releasing this excitement as light, just like we might release our excitement by dancing).

Finally, we mixed some GAK with glow paint (but glow powder would work just as well). This experiment is fun to do no matter what, and seeing it glow in the dark after you mix it just makes it that much cooler =D

Perler Beads: I did that as a kid!

So I'm always looking for fun craft projects to do. Shrinky Dinks were really fun at our Hunger Games Party, and I only knew about those because I used to do them as a kid. That got me to thinking what other things I had done as a kid, and I immediately thought of Perler Beads.

Now I never called them Perler Beads when I was growing up. It was just "those bead things" we always did at Grandma's house. Basically, you take a plastic peg board with tiny little pegs, put tiny little beads on them, and then iron them. The iron melts the beads together and you have an awesome and simple little thingy :)

My family already had the peg board shapes at our house, but they are easy to find at craft stores. Most of the time you can purchase beads and peg boards in a kit. If you already have the peg boards, you just need to purchase a thing of beads, and bring an iron from home.

The kids had a really fun time putting them together, and they also thought it was really cool that some beads and an iron could make such cool designs.

Altered Book Collages: Imagine, Resue, Repurpose

Has anyone heard of altered books? Basically, you take a book that isn't going to be read anymore, and you repurpose it into a craft project.

Some people make purses; some people make wreaths; some people make poems. But no matter what is made, I thought the idea was super cool!

First of all, it's cool because it is something totally out of the box.

Secondly, it's cool because it breaks all the rules. You aren't supposed to cut, paste, or damage a book. But, if the book is destined for a landfill, why shouldn't we use it as a craft project? If a book has been well-loved, why not love it one more time?

Lastly, it's cool because, well, its just cool!

For our first foray into altered books, we just did collages. Working at a library, there were plenty of discarded books to choose from. Then it was simply a matter of grabbing stencils, yarn, stickers, markers, fancy scissors, and buttons, and letting the kids imagine what their books could look like. Some of the kiddos decorated the covers, other kids picked a pair of pages inside, while other kids posted a single element onto each page inside.

The kids had a really good time, and I'll definitley do altered books again. Might be a different project next time, though, because there are so many ideas out there!

Pinterest: Your Interests in a Picture Social Network

So, something that has come across my radar recently is Pinterest, and I have to say that I am a fan.

Pinterest is a new social media fad that was originally popular with crafters and do-it-yourselfers. This social network allows you to create a "board" and then "pin" pictures to it. Your board could be "Books Worth Reading" (my first board of pins lol) and each one would be filled with pictures with a short description underneath them.

The thing that makes this different than other social networks is the focus on pictures instead of text. It also cites the web page that you got the picture from automatically.

If you have interests that would look cool in a picture format, or you just want to browse what others have set up, take a look at Pinterest.