By Awnali Mills
As you are probably aware, March was Women’s History Month. I was so inspired by an email my mother sent me about everyday inventions that were created by women that I created a scavenger hunt for our March passive program based on these women and their inventions.
The way it worked was that at the desk the kids would pick up a sheet that listed the women on the right side and their inventions on the left side. I made lift-a-flap cards that had a picture of the invention on the outside and when they lifted the flap, there was a picture of the woman who invented it (if available), her name, and a little bit about the invention. The kids were supposed to then draw a line from the invention to the woman. When they had completed the sheet, they turned it in at the desk. At the end of the month, we drew one of the sheets, and that person won a book about amazing women.
This was not the most popular of our passive programs, but people really got into it. Several parents completed it while they were waiting for their kids to complete computer time, and told us how fascinating it was. One young lady turned in her sheet and said, “I learned stuff I’ve never known before.” It wasn’t something that our youngest patrons could do without a parent’s help, but older children seemed to enjoy it, and our staff felt pretty passionately that it was an important passive program.