This summer, Ada and PLIX Intern Vivian held a total of 11 online PLIX Play Cafe workshops! Over the course of the sessions, we drank 22 cups of tea with 41 library pen pals around the world and explored playful invitations into creative STEAM learning. We mailed out 81 envelopes(!) containing tea, snacks, hearts, flowers, cows, LEDs, washi tape, and more. Thank you to everyone who participated for sharing your cats, stories of your local communities, and, most of all, your hearts with us. (Special shout-outs to Eva who joined us regularly with her cat, late at night from Germany, and Jennifer who joined us early in the morning in Hawaii!)
These are some of our favorite moments from this summer. Enjoy!
The different emojis people submitted!
In our Play Cafe sign ups, we asked people, “How are you today, in emojis?” and here are some of them. I love imagining what people may be doing and feeling (see my interpretations in parentheses below). What stories do you see in these emojis?
🥱🖥️😸(Sleepy at a computer with a cat!)
👨👩👧👦🏊♀️🎇(A family goes swimming during the fireworks?)
🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵(A group of 7 people sweating together on a hot day?!)
👻🐸🤹🪅🛠🌙🫥(A ghost frog started juggling pinatas and hardware tools in the moonlight and then disappeared?!!?!?!)
😁🖖🧑🎨🏊♀️🍅(?!?!)
😀😍👩🦰👩❤️👨 🛻🛣🌅⚓️🎉 (This one is super sweet!)
☹️😬😶🌫️☄️🪬🪲 (?!?!)
All the zoom doodles
We love drawing together!
Learning about local flora through nature mandala symmetry
One of my favorite natural mandala symmetries is created by Leila, and all the pieces comes from pieces of the same tree! (Psst, Leila - could you remind me which tree this is?)
Jacqui’s beautiful library and symmetry
Library spaces are our favorite spaces and this beautiful library is one of Jacqui’s favorites that she celebrated with our Beautiful Symmetry activity.
Expressing our passions for anime
Jennifer is a talented artist-librarian and created this delightful “koizilla” inflatable with a paper cut-out, inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender!
Sharing our local celebrations
City festivals celebrate our unique local communities, and we loved these two that others have shared with us: Blob Fest in Phoenixville, PA that celebrates the 1958 movie “The Blob,” and Spam Jam in Waikiki, HI, that elevates all things Spam!
Bringing to light our (local) social justice issues
In our Paper Circuits Play Cafe, Margaux created this social justice light-up pin, pushing against book bans (see the message inside). (And here’s our pin celebrating the Media Lab!)
“Here Comes the Sun” on TP Kazoos
We played a beautifully improvised rendition of “Here Comes the Sun” on toilet paper tube kazoos we made!
Cats and Paper Circuits!
We love our Paper Circuits activity and we’re delighted to find that so do cats.
Dogs and (In)visible Self!
In one of our Play Cafes, we explored and shared different textures like paper and felt, and how they make us feel.
Listening to They Might Be Giants, drinking tea, and being cozy together as we play
The PLIX Play Cafe has made this summer one of my favorite summers ever. Thank you to all who participated, synchronously and asynchronously. We hope you enjoyed the envelopes with teas, snacks, and crafts that we sent out. It’s been a pleasure to share the joy of creative learning with you and we look forward to seeing you again in the upcoming months.