Our mission in the Lely Elementary School Media Center is simple: create a kid-friendly, colorful, vibrant learning wonderland. To that end, we are creating spaces that will inspire wonderment in our kids and spur them to investigate and ask questions. Our media center is not a book warehouse; it is an interactive learning experience. At least, that is what we want it to be, and so we keep that end goal in mind with every feature that we add. What will inspire kids? What will bring out their curiosity? What will make them think and investigate? What will make them want to learn?
In the past couple of months, we have added a lot of features that the kids seem to love. We created an entire STEM area full of things for kids to observe and ways for kids to create. We have our enclosed ecosystems featuring our aquaponics and fish tank. This is a system where the water from the fish tank is pumped out and through the aquaponics garden, watering the plants. The plants filter and clean the water before it is returned to the fish tank. Kids can see this system at work every half hour. To be honest, the kids really come in to see the fish!
After seeing how much the kids loved the aquaponics set-up, we moved our 3D printer to that area as well. Kids can now see the printer at work, and some kids have started designing objects to print themselves. Whenever the 3D printer is at work, the kids stop for a few minutes to marvel at how it works.
To complete our STEM station, we got a Plasma Ball. This really "wow'd" the kiddos. They saw the electricity running through it and immediately wanted to touch it. When they did, they discovered that the electricity in the ball was drawn to the electricity in their bodies. Now, kids cannot come to the media center without touching the plasma ball! They love it and ask many good questions about how it works. This is discovery learning at its finest.
Another cool feature that we added to the media center is a TV and outdoor speaker. We hung the TV facing outward in the media center window. On it, we play slideshows, videos, and other school-related information for the kids to watch as they walk by or stand in line outside the media center. The speaker will play the video sounds or music when the slideshow plays with no background music. Normally we play Mozart or Handel while the slideshows play. Right now we are playing a slideshow with pictures from our incredibly successful walk-a-thon. Kids love seeing the pictures that we rotate on the television. All of the programming is controlled by a laptop that we have inside the media center that is hooked to the television with an HDMI cord. It is a nifty set-up.
During book fair, we try to create a fun and vibrant event! This year, we did two things that the kids seemed to love. We had gotten some gel tiles to create a pathway into the book fair. When kids step on the tile, the colored gel moves. They loved these tiles. They would walk back and forth on them, play hopscotch on them, and jump up and down on them. These tiles were a hit! The kids also liked the blinking light strips that we put up around the media center doors. We had a lot of "Whoas!" when kids saw them. We like that!
All in all, this has been a productive stretch for our media center improvements. Our favorite comment from kids is, "Every time I come into the media center, there's something new!" We are happy that they notice the changes. We will continue to change and evolve until this media center is the kid-friendly, colorful, vibrant learning wonderland that we are striving to create. We are well on our way but stay tuned for some big changes that are coming in the next few months. We are having the time of our lives creating this space for our kids!
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