The Children’s Library at Norelius Community Library was busy on Tuesday with the sounds of children working together to build imaginary space habitats, using only newspapers, staples and tape. Look below to see more photos and to read an explanation about this exercise.

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Event turns youth into space contractors

ISU Extension and Norelius Community Library teamed up on Tuesday to engage youth in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) exercise. The youth were asked to imagine they had embarked on an intergalactic mission and had to construct a space habitat for a true astronaut.

Their only building materials to make a free-standing structure were newspapers, staples and tape.

The youth had to work together as a team and figure out how to work through the challenges of building the structure. After the structures were built, the groups were asked to talk about their structure, how and why it was built and what they think they could have done better.