Programing Woes

The insightful bloggers over at Kids Library Program Mojo brought up a very interesting POINT when it comes to after school programing.

Consider The Parents: Kids Library Program Mojo

We've experienced a drop in our program numbers over the years. About two years ago we had exceptionally low numbers.My co-workers and I grumbled about poor advertising and PR and decided to take charge with our own campaign to advertise.
In the post, the blogger admits as a working mother, she is already exhausted after a day of work to try and have her equally tired and cranky child to an afterschool program at the library.

I agree with her. I think the idea of afterschool programing has become a dreaded two edge sword. We feel the need as librarians to provide these programs to the public. However I think in our community, we are faced with kids already involved in so many other activities (sports, bible studies etc.) Note: Oh if we had a bible class at our library I'm sure that program would be full. But no thanks. I realize that the last place kids want to go to when they finally have some free time. 

The solution? I think we already do a good job about addressing school age kids during the summer. I would say about 80% of our summer programs are geared towards pre k-5th grade. So what we lack for numbers during the school year, we make up during the summer.

Personally, I feel we might try moving kids programs to later in the evening. We already have evening storytimes at 6:30 pm. This time seems to work well for patrons who attend them. I've seen other libraries in the area have programs around 6-7 in the evening. Also this could open up a chance for kids with working parents the ability to attend our programs since it's after 5 o'clock and dinnertime. I'm thinking about bringing this up when we discuss programing which might be blasphemy as we have always had our programs at 4:30 pm! The fear of change!

Weekend programs are also a good option as well as passives. We are trying examples of both this summer, so we can monitor our success and go from there. Every Friday we are putting out a toddler sensory lab for kids 3 and under. We will be doing Family Science Labs on Saturday mornings in an effort to catch families visiting the Farmer's Market down the street from us. Again, working moms and dads would have more motivation to bring their kids to the library for programs on the weekends.

I would like to see more attendance for programs for this age group. However, I will be the first to admit that school age programs are not my forte. I concentrate on Teens and Toddlers so I'm not sure how much say I have when it comes to shaking things up in my department.