Summer Reading Club: Week 6

Week 6 has come and gone for summer reading, meaning we only have 2 weeks left of summer reading! Technically, there are three weeks, since we keep the prize store open for an extra week for stragglers, but programming and other events are done the week after next.

We're up to 114 teens signed up for the summer reading club, 78 pre-readers, and 312 youth. That brings our total to 504 signed up, which is officially more than last year.

Programming was exhausting but so much fun this week. We did not have the weather on our side, though, as we enjoyed a week of absolute heat and humidity, and that took a toll on attendance and my programming plans. But I made changes as I went, and things ended up just fine. I have to remind myself all the time that I'm the only one who knows what the plan really was, so no one can be disappointed if not everything happened.

As usual, we had our Monday Lego Club, though the crowd was low, with only 15 attendees.

Tuesday was our Recycled Costume Show, which I blogged about already, and we had about 35 show up for this program. This was a program I think was impacted the most by the heat, since we had to move inside.

On Wednesday, we ran our tween program, and this week we did Chocolate Olympics. I plan to blog about this program, since it's one that was a total blast (though a shade pricey). The kids had a lot of fun, and we even managed to sneak outside for a little bit to do a couple events. I may or may not have been conned into participating in a couple events myself by these kids. We ended up having nearly 40 for this program, which was a wonderful attendance.

Thursday, we took the Chocolate Olympics idea and morphed it a tiny bit for the teens, calling it our Death by Chocolate party. Again, I'll slip in the information about this program in a post next week, but this was another hugely popular program that left a lot of teens very happy (and messy, which was my favorite part!). We had 20 for this program, which is a great turn out, and I loved that it was more boys than girls.

All of the programs were a blast but super exhausting, since they were all staff-intensive programs. We have just two more staff intensive programs next week -- an international festival and a tween art program -- along with teen book club. Then the following week we have our final performer, along with a teen Lego competition. The end is so in sight, and I can't wait to be done and on to seeing what our final completion numbers are, among other things. I'm ready to sit down and really think about what worked well and what can be changed for next year. I'm also super excited to start talking about the new fall programming planned, since I'm trying some new ideas out.