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Strong Paper Structure
New activity
Build a newspaper structure that is strong enough to hold heavy
books.
Open Activity
How-to Video
Family Take-home Activity
A take-home that can be sent with patrons that wish to do STEM activities at home. These at-home activities cover similar topic areas as the associated activity and could be handed out at the conclusion of a program or left on a circulation desk for patrons to take home.
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Rating
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Reviews
Always fun!
I have done this was a variety of age groups: from 4-6th graders, 7-12th graders, and adults. Each time has been fun and well received, For the younger kids- 4-6th graders- it would be a good idea to have some tubes pre-rolled, and to spend a portion of the program demonstrating how best to roll the tubes themselves. For the younger grade, rolling tubes was by far the most frustrating thing, but the fun in building a structure outweighed any annoyance they had. For older teens, and adults, we made it a competition- whose structure could hold the most books. That added an additional challenge element that made things extra fun.
Great use for last week's newspaper
Kids had a great time bending newspapers into a variety of shapes and tinkering to make them fit together and stand up, then adding further work to make the structures stand.
The hardest part for most young participants was rolling the tubes thin enough for good strength. If you have some volunteer help available for prep, I might suggest having a decent quantity of tubes pre-rolled if you want the focus to be on the building process. Another option if time permits could be to practice rolling them as a group. I also found that the suggested diagonal roll was easy to create, but then works best if you cut off the ends so they aren't a weak point. We had good luck with straight rolls, so you might try both methods and see which works best for your group.
As an added fun piece, we bought a few of the decorated types of duct tape, which kids enjoyed using as added embellishments.