Women in History

For March I designed and implemented a Women in History program at the Hussey-Mayfield Library. The program was for 1st-3rd grade girls. I was asked to come up with a program that would teach girls about famous authors, scientists, and other influential women. The program lasted 45 mins. 

I choose to design the program around 3 women: 

1) Author/illustrator Beatrix Potter 
2) Astronaut Sally Ride 
3) Scientist Marie Curie

The activities included making:

1) pocket sketchbooks
2) hovercrafts
3) slime

Beatrix Potter: I discussed how she had spent most of her childhood in the upstairs of her parent's home with a large variety of pets. Beatrix began creating sketches of her pets when she was 8 years old. She went on to write an illustrated letter to her friend's son which included Peter Rabbit, a character she modeled after her own pet rabbit. Peter Rabbit became the world's first licensed character. The activity included making a pocket sketchbook for the girls to take home and color changing pencils donated by Purdue University's Technology Leadership & Innovation department. 

Sally Ride, I had contacted the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Educator Resource Center located in Huntsville, AL, and received NASA stickers, space posters, and curriculum books. During the program, we discussed how Sally Ride was the first female astronaut, her background, what life in space was like for her, and how teams of NASA astronauts are now very diverse. For the activity I had the girls build hovercrafts using old CDs, plastic tubes, and balloons. I had the girls predict what they thought would happen after blowing up the balloon and sticking it on the tube. After demonstrating the hovercraft, I explained the basic physics behind the hovercraft and we held hover craft races across the floor. The girls got to keep their hovercrafts and NASA stickers. 

Marie Curie: We talked about how Marie Curie was the first woman to win a noble prize and then went on the win a second noble prize. We talked about the importance of her research to medicine and technology. I discussed how Curie researched radioactive materials and how she used to chemically break down minerals into a sludge. From that sludge, she would find radioactive particles. For the activity, we made our own radioactive sludge. We used equal parts glue, water, and liquid starch to make a slime with a pinch of glitter for the radioactive particles.  The girls were able to take their slime home as well. 

Since this was held at a library, I used Girls research! : amazing tales of female scientists  by Jennifer Phillips as a visual aid.