A Mid-summer Reminder to Keep It Real (& Laugh!)

Of all the age groups I work with, I think I have the most fun with the tween crowd. They're an energetic bunch, fun to talk to, and they are down with doing anything and there's never any shame. I've been doing a program for them each week and consistently have great turn out.

Today's program, which I'll blog about later, was a beaded creations program. It was super laid back, and the kids could do anything they wanted.

You know what they wanted to do and I let them do, between stringing beads and making knots (me making the knots, not them, of course)? They wanted to play with my people clicker.

They had clicker races.
I challenged them to make it to some arbitrary number by the time I finished knotting someone's ring (seriously - they gave me these tiny strings to tie, and even though I have the world's smallest hands, it wasn't easy!)
They showed off how good they were at turning it back to 0.
One girl showed her little sister, who was 2, how to use it.

Then I told them if they were that into my clicker, I could do a whole program of it. And the idea not only excited them, but they suggested we only have one clicker for the program so they could all share.

I suppose this is like when I had a lock in, and the teens were most interested in using our cardboard Edward Cullen as an artistic canvas. His bedazzled jeans and glowing green gem eyes were the highlight of the night.

Sometimes, stepping back to think about the little things that bring your patrons joy is just a reminder that what matters to them is less what you do and more that you're doing something for them. That shows you care. And the more you laugh about the little things that bring the kids joy, the less the imperfections/problems/things that didn't go exactly as you planned matter.

Let's go to Canada!: A Tween Program

This year's cooperative library summer theme for children is "One World, Many Stories." As part, I've incorporated a few (and I emphasize few) programs that involve travel or foreign activities. I'm not a stickler for themes, as I think they can be a bit stifling, but I took today's tweens-only program straight from the theme: Canada Day Celebration!

Like the US, Canada has a big independence day celebration, held every year on July 1. We got in on the celebration by offering up three crafts and a treat for our attendees.

First up, treat time!

I purchased a maple leaf shaped cookie cutter from Amazon, and it cost me less than $1.50. My coworker volunteered to make the cookies, which were simple sugar cookies, and I picked up 2 cans of white frosting and 2 shakers of red and white sugar crystals. Total cost was under $10, and we had between 80 and 90 cookies.

I set the supplies out and let the kids make their maple leaf cookies however they wanted. Most looked like this:


Then it was on to one of three crafts. Myself, along with a coworker and my intern, manned the craft stations. I handled the fireworks bookmarks. For this, I cut black construction paper into 1/4 strips. I hole punched the top of each and gave the kids red and white ribbon to tie. I ended up doing a lot of the tying but it wasn't a big deal. They wanted their ribbons to look like my sample.

I then let the kids lay down thick lines and shapes in glue however they wanted to. Then, they put their glue-covered black paper into a paper box lid and were given free reign over glitter.

Their creations ranged from things that kinda looked like the fireworks I made to something else entirely. I am a huge proponent of letting the kids make whatever art they want to make, so as you can see, it was a little everywhere. And little did I expect how popular this craft would be -- some kids made 4 or 5 book marks because they loved the free access to glitter.



The next craft the tweens did was make Canadian flag magnets out of fuse beads. My lovely intern was given the assignment to figure out how to turn red and white fuse beads into a Canadian flag, and she did an amazing job. We had only two of the small beds to do the flag making on, so this station was a slower one, but the kids who did it got a kick out of their final products.

Apologies for the blurry photo! If you're curious, that flag is made up of 93 red beads and 60 white, with 17 columns and 9 rows. I've included the actual pattern below (thanks Mary!):

We did the ironing of the flags when the kids finished putting the beads together, and then they were able to pop the small magnets on the backs themselves. A lot of the tweens found this to be the harder/more frustrating craft, but they all loved the end result (and let me tell you how fun it is to see a bunch of Canadian flags around the library).

The very last craft we had was a beaver pin. I found the pattern for this one right here. I picked up all of the small beads at Walmart, but let me tell you this: finding the pins was not easy. I went to multiple stores and had multiple trips before finding enough of the right size pins. Because the right size base pins were essential to fit all of the beads onto. But! There was triumph and we had all of the appropriate pins come program day.

They turned out extremely cute, and for the kids who didn't get a chance to finish, we were able to pack up some of the beads and pins for them to take home. Some of the kids wanted to make other things with their pins and again, we were game. One girl made herself a gold medal, even.

We had both guys and girls come out to the program, and it was enjoyed equally by all. We ended up having 22 kids, which is smaller than duct tape was, but still an extremely good showing for limiting the program to 9-12 year olds only. Plus, we got to celebrate Canada and the kids really got a kick out of it. It was familiar enough and foreign enough to them to be a total blast. I think the total cost was around $50 or $60, and we had a ton of left over beads and craft supplies for another program in the future, since we planned for almost 40. You could do this program on the cheap, especially if you have a lot of the supplies already.

Summer Reading: Week Two

I'm a week behind in wrapping up summer reading, so this week, there will be two in a row. This is for week two, where we got to do a lot of really exciting programs.

First, the stats: I took my counts last Thursday morning, and we had 75 teens signed up for summer reading, 252 youth age 4-12, and 51 pre-readers. That's nearly 400 people signed up already, which is almost what last year's numbers were all summer long, and we're only on week two. It feels wonderful!

We ran our regular Lego and Games club on Monday, where we had 27 attendees (up from the week before). I keep this program extremely low key, and I think that's part of why it's successful. We don't have a theme, and all I do is dump out a couple tubs of Legos on the floor and drag in a box of board games. This time, no one played games but instead, they all concentrated on making epic Lego creations.

On Tuesday, we had one of our performers who is brought in through our library system. We do all of our big programs outside under a tent, since our building's meeting room has very limited capacity. The weather looked chancey all day, but we had 97 attendees. The storyteller was a bit of a disappointment, saying she didn't need anything when really she needed a sound system (which we have). She wasn't super engaged with the kids, and she wasn't observant of what was going on around her, either. The sky grew very dark about half way through the performance, and our summer camp crew (which brings in 25-30 kids to the event) just left. After they left, so did everyone else, and the performance was cut way short. It was a little embarrassing on our end, but I'd rather the 97 attendees be safe from the weather than stay and not be. We ended up having some wicked storms from that point onto the rest of the day.

On Wednesday, we had a combined tween/teen program, where we brought in author Siobhan Vivian to do a writing workshop. There was a lot of stress to get her out here, actually, as the weather that impacted our performer on Tuesday also impacted her flight into Wisconsin. After a lot of tears and profanity on the phone, we snagged her a very early flight to Chicago Wednesday morning, where she rented a car and drove up. She did a program at three libraries that day, and I'm extremely pleased to say we drew 29 attendees. Each person who came who didn't already have a copy of her book Same Difference was able to get one, and they all got them signed after the performance. I also made everyone mini notebooks to keep, which featured the program name, date, and thank yous to our sponsors. I plan on talking about this event in more detail in another post, since it was such a great event.

After the event, I took a small group of my book club kids out for dinner with Siobhan, as well. They talked about the restaurant they ate at, and the way Siobhan talked to them about it made it so cool for the kids to see how questions can spark creativity and stories. It's one of those things I know the kids won't forget -- for them, this was meeting someone famous, and it was meeting someone who was interested in hearing their stories, too.

Thursday, I did an extremely easy program for just the teens -- ice cream creations. I cleaned out our staff kitchen, which had many half-full boxes of candy, cookies, sprinkles and more from various programs, including the candy bottle guessing game, then I made a run to the store to pick up 5 large tubs of ice cream. I also picked up a jug of chocolate sauce and a couple other sauces, a bunch of bananas, and laid out bowls, spoons, and scoops. Then, we opened the doors and told the teens to have fun. We had 29 show up for this super easy and relatively inexpensive program, and many of these attendees were the kinds of kids we'd never see in the library. All for free ice cream, indeed. But you know what? It got them in. We had a little drama with this program in policing the age of attendees, as the very young kids wanted in; we tempered this by telling the older kids to bring a scoop of ice cream out to their siblings after they ate.

Friday was our storytime, but I was on a plane down to New Orleans for the American Library Association conference, feeling pretty pleased with program attendance and signups this week. I feel like I know some of the areas where I can improve for the future, but for now, it's straight on to week three, which you'll hear about in the next couple of days.

Middle school book talk

I haven't forgotten about this -- it's just been busy. A handful of good stories times mixed with a couple of real bummers. I'll tell you about those soon.

But today I'm spending the entire day in 7th grade again, talking books. Lots of books. I've talked a few of these titles before at my prior job, and they're all natural sells. I try hard for this age to mix fiction and non-fiction, though this talk seems heavier on fiction.

Besides these books, I'm bringing a bag of new titles I won't be talking but that either haven't moved much on the shelf or look appealing. I have the honor to give a number of these students their first library cards today, so I'm offering them the chance to browse a small sampling of what all our library has to offer them.

Have you talked any of these titles? Have you had success? Check back to see what these kids loved most!

Phoenixtalk dec2010

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