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Three girls. Five boys. Scissors. Markers.

Seated at a long table covered in cheerful plastic cloth, a group of 6- to 9-year-olds jiggle with life in neutral — looking, touching, laughing, asking questions.

When does the flying begin? When do we cut?

"Everyone gets a purple piece of paper," says Pamela Moore, holding a piece up for focus from the head of the table. Moore, a librarian who has worked with kids for 41 years, has the pay-attention-now in her voice — not patronizing, but measured and vaguely promising, like the lines of a child's birthday card.

She's teaching them to make paper airplanes today. "For cutting and folding and later flying."

Good, good. Action, then. Finally.

A basket of markers snakes its way down the table. There's a discussion on what colors will show up on purple, which is confirmed, by popular consensus, as a color both girls and boys like.

"I like every kind of color." This is Garrett Chapman, 7.

"I know some guys that like pink and wear pink," someone offers.

"Why does everyone have to have a purple piece of paper?" John Mattucci asks. He's 6. His twin sister Nicole is quietly working on her own plane further down the table.

"Because that was the only kind of paper they had," Garrett answers without looking up from his project.

Joshua McMahon, 7, stands up. He looks worried. "I don't know how to make this kind. I only know how to fold them."

Moore doesn't try to keep up. Instead, she floats along, addressing some issues and letting others drift by. Moore runs the children's library at the Collier County Public Library on Orange Blossom, as well as designs and directs its popular "Rad Science" program. Like other classes in the nearly year-round program, today's is hands-on, allowing the children to learn about the basics of aerodynamics through experimentation and engagement.

"We've made soda. We've made slime. We get the room soaking wet," she says at one point. "You know people living in apartments or nice homes these days, they're not willing or don't have the ability to let kids just mess things up. They can do that here."

Today there is folding, advanced coloring on wings, glances at neighboring construction, blank stares and quizzical looks. Volunteer Jasna Gopalan, 17, circulates among the kids to demonstrate, correct or simply fold it for them.

"You can't take more than one," John advises a boy in a Mariners baseball hat as he gathers a fistful of markers from the basket. Jakob Brezina, 7, simply looks at John before he takes them back to his seat.

"Can we cut out the plane now?" That's Garrett. He likes to talk. "Sometimes a little too much," says his dad later. Curtis, 41, and wife Allison, 40, laugh.

Cutting. Moore takes them through in painfully slow increments. "If you cut inside the line, that doesn't make a difference," she assures them. "Well, it does make a difference. It will make a difference in how it flies."

Pause. "But that's OK because flying different is just fine in this class."

Like every group, there are the quiet ones here, the one with all the answers, the gregarious ones. Most of the kids don't know each other, but they warm to each other as they test the purple plane, which is an unlikely mushroom-shaped design, in the reading room, everyone lining up against one curved wall. For most, it plummets to the floor.

Still, it elicits "Wooooooooooo," fist pumping and general glee from the group.

Back to the crafts room for the second plane, a pointy yellow one that looks like a jet. Ten minutes later the group trundles back through the library with both.

"What do you have there, Zhanna?" asks Karen White of her daughter, 8. White, who would not give her age, gives her a full body thumbs-up that in a few short years will mortify Zhanna. White credits this library and programs like this one with rehabilitating her daughter's interest in reading. "Now she's picking up books and curling up and reading independently," she says. "I used to have to take her to the table and make her read."

White gestures to the room.

"They have the best librarians with boundless energy and intractable endurance. I've never seen them have a bad day. The child is the center of the universe here."

In the reading room, yellow planes skim effortlessly across the room.

More glee.

They change the pitch of the tip and fly. They move the paper clip around and fly. They throw with dominant and weak arms and watch them fly. Each time they tacitly monitor elements of aerodynamics in action — but without the thick terminology or rigid procedure that leaves little room for childhood meanderings.

"... I'm a spy," Jakob tells another boy as he shows him his plane. "So that means it's a military plane."

One, two, three, glide. They send both planes into the air. The yellows surge forward like a tide, leaving the purples to come to rest in the middle of the room.

They fly and fly some more.

When the group disperses, Moore stands alone in this shoebox of a room.

"The years when they're eager to learn are so brief. Teachers, they have curriculum. Here they can just learn. They won't remember the details. Maybe they remember that they made paper airplanes one day. Maybe one child makes more. One reads a book on airplanes. Another decides he wants to become a pilot or to build airplanes."

"You just never know," Moore says. "You just never know."