What to do with all those leftover Easter eggs?

We have a memo from our boss. We are "supposed" to be moving into a new building within the next year or two, so all of our excess craft supplies we have hoarded in the basement needed to be used or thrown away because they are not moving into the new library!

(I'm all for this! This years of hoarding TP rolls was way before my time and I'm not a person who enjoys clutter. My stress levels rise when I have too many book on my tiny desk!)

We have a large book bin with plastic Easter eggs. They were used for activities a couple years ago but have mostly remained untouched. So I decided to reuse them for a craft, just in time for Easter spring break.

I'm channeling my inner "Khalessi" and making dragon eggs! I was looking for craft ideas to go with our spring break movie for today "How to Train Your Dragon 2" A search of dragon crafts for little kids was kinda of limited. But I loved the examples of dragon eggs (I'm totally doing this one) and thought I can adapt this so kids can create a simplified version.

The craft works just like paper mache. Kids have the option to use paintbrushes but I've always preferred using my fingers. It seems like it's a lost art among today's kiddos.

1) Select your egg. Spread a thin layer of glue over it. - I used clear glue but any glue or Mod Podge that dries clear will work fine.
2) Cover the egg with strips of tissue paper. Smooth down with your finger and use more glue when needed. Experiment with layers and different colors.
3)Provide a container (condiment cup, paper cup, etc.) for kids to place their egg when they are done. That way there is a safe way to carry them around the library and then home as they dry. Decorate with what ever art supplies your have home for extra flair.

Not just for Easter! Use this dragon craft idea all year round. Can also be used for Minecraft programs to create dragon eggs from the game.

Storytime from the Liberry: Make Mine Music

Why pay big bucks to sign up your toddler for fancy drum circle sessions when you can come to my music story time and do it for free?
I have never understood the phenomenon behind music classes for babies and toddlers and why people shell out major bills just sing to their kiddo. Probably because I already do that stuff at home. Half my conversations with my daughter are some sort of music. I don't need to fork over 100 bucks to have some person tell me its good for her development to bang on some pots and pans.

So I'm inviting all parents to a "free preview class" of my toddler storytime were we sing together, read stories and have fun. As a bonus, if you enjoy your first session you can continue to come to our storytimes for free! As many as you want! No cost to you! Act now!

(Maybe I'm in the wrong business, I should start charging for this)

The title for this story time comes from the overlooked Disney film of the same name.

Books:
I had a really hard time deciding on what books to read because their are some many to choose from!
I narrowed my selection down to five but still was only able to read four at each storytime.

Baby's Got the Blues by Carol Diggory Shields- This book is hilarious. Very appealing for the grown ups in the crowd.
Can you Dance to the Boogaloo by Alice Lickens
Boom Bah by Phil Cummings- This book as great opportunities for movement and audience participation.
Farmyard Beat by Lindsey Craig
The Orchestra Pit by Johanna Wright

Songs and Activities:
Our ready to read skill this week was singing (duh!) so we did lots of songs and dancing on top of our usual stuff.

Old MacDonald Had a Band -Classic Piggyback method. I do have to warn my group ahead of time but sometime "farm" slips in there a couple times as we sung. Raffi has a version on CD

The Grand Old Duke of York - Can You Dance to the Boogaloo ended with the line "Just don't you dare sit still" so it was a great transition to get the kids up on their feet.

We Wave Our Scarves Together- This song comes from the gals at jbrary
Our baby storytime librarian ordered these rainbow dancing scarves (similar to these) which helped out with the dreaded "I want this color!" whining that usually happens. I happily passed these out exclaiming, "They are all the same color. We will all have rainbows!!" I also feel this could be a simple DIY craft for libraries on a budget.

We ended our session with music instrument free play time. I sat back and smiled watching the kids go nuts and just wanting to take on any old fart who dared complained about children making too much noise in the library.

What are you doing on your Holiday break?

If your like me, you've spent everyday at the library since it started and will be here every day until we close on Christmas Eve.

Like a Christmas eve mass/church service you may find your little library filled with a surge of strange guests, defiantly not your regular patrons and folks who never visit the library except twice a year (Christmas and Easter) So what can you do to accommodate these new visitors? If you are like some of my co-workers you probably bemoan the long winter break when caregiver dump their charges off in the kid section while they use the internet on the other side of the building, or complain that your relativity quite time of the year is suddenly shaken and chaotic with the number of people clamoring for you assistance and attention. These co-workers who complain the loudest are coincidentally the ones who always request time off for vacation and left the skeleton crew to man the fort.

So what can you do about this? Instead of bemoaning, be proactive! There are many kids and families looking for something free to do during the holidays. Many parents need a well deserved break from decorating, cooking and being cooped up in the house all day.

If you are worried about hoards of bored children descending into your realm, provide them with a distraction and eliminated the boredom.Some library have designated play sections for children in their youth services department, so this is a no brainier. My department has tables, chairs, and couches, 3 kids computers....and that's it. So if you are in my boat, here a few tips to turn your department into a Winter Break Wonderland.

1) If you have toys, games or other passive activities, put them out now! In plain view! Don't give kids a chance to complain "There is nothing to do here!" Not when they enter the kid's section and see stacks of puzzles and games waiting on the tables for them. I gathered an arm load of large floor puzzles, board and card games and left them out for kids and families to use. We also have Candyland boards and chess boards taped to a few tables. You usually have to ask at the desk for the piece, but I just went ahead and put them out now, so new patrons can go ahead and use them.

2) Display your hot topic books! Do we have Christmas books? We have Christmas books coming out of our ears! They are displayed in a book cart right in front of the children's desk as well as around our Christmas tree. Also since December is a slow circulation month, we have tons of our "Young Reader's Favorites" books in house (any thing that deals with Disney, LEGO or other popular kids characters) They are also placed on a display cart right in the main reading area so kids can find what they are looking for.

3) Create a passive program. Have stations set up around your department. They can be holiday or seasonal; a craft station to make an ornament, a scavenger hunt, or a sensory table. Use what you have on hand; Make snowflakes! Paper and scissors and you're done!

4) Have a coloring table. The kids at my library are obsessed with coloring. Our table gets more visits than our help desk.

5) If you have a movie license, consider having movies during break. We are showing some old school movies (The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Neverending Story, E.T.) all during the holiday break.

6) Impromptu Storytime! If you happen to be starring at a large group of rascally children, pick up a book and do what you do best! Read to the kids. It doesn't have to be a holiday book, but instead you can ask the kids in the audience what there favorite books are and read those.

Sorry for the weak iphone photo

My merry little sign that could reads "Welcome to the library! Please enjoy some board games and puzzles during your visit today. If you have any questions or need to find a book, just ask a staff member and we would be glad to help you. We are happy you came to visit us!"

So as much as I want to "Bah humbug" at this time of year, I feel a little bit of provocativeness can go along way to help my your library a fun place to visit. And yes I'll be here at the desk if you need me.

LEGO Club : V 1.0 and V 2.0

We embarked on a great experiment this summer at the library; Starting a LEGO Club. Purchased our bricks, made vague outline of what we were doing, reserved the meeting room and decided to go with the flow....

We had over 60 kids show up to our first session. It was standing room only! As the crowd grew bigger, we sprang into action. We decide there wasn't enough bricks or room for everyone to have their own space and enough bricks for their own creation. We had 6 tables and told everyone that they had to work as a team on the challenge (which was vehicles). This presented some problems but also some wonderful creations and a great time for kids to engage in teamwork!

Pros and Woes
1) Parents: We opened the program to all ages so we wouldn't exclude any younger children who enjoyed playing with LEGO at home with their older siblings. So we had parents stay in the room and observe, but some wanted to help out. One in particular wanted to help out a lot. When we informed the room that each table could not vote for their own creation, one mother interrupted me asking if the parents could vote for their kids. On the spot, we said no.

2)Little Kids- We had explained to patrons before that this was a collaborative building program, not a "knocking-over-towers" program. While we wanted it to appeal to older kids, we certainly didn't want younger kids who played with LEGO to be left out. Who wants to tell a five year old no, he can't be in a program all about his/her favorite toy? Some parents expressed concern that their wasn't a table just for little kids because older ones ("boys") were being pushing or overbearing. Most of these kids were able to find some bricks to make their own stuff, but we did stick to our rules of one creation per table. Also I found it a bit unfair to force kids to work with the same age group or sex. Sometimes issues like this are the parents' decisions. They can decide whether their kid is ready to work together or needs their own space. Thankfully all the kids there knew what LEGO was and we weren't plagued with toddlers sticking them in their mouths!

3)Voting- We were kind of running this by the seat of our pants for this first session. We did voting by a show of hands which didn't work so well. Kids voted more than once, complained they wanted to change their vote and worst of all, kids got to see that no one else was voting for their creations.

We ended our first program with stunning collaborative creations!
I was also put on the spot and asked which one I thought was the best. I said I wasn't voting because all of them were 10 times better than anything I could have made!

When we took them apart afterwards , we were amazed at how much thought and detail we saw! We counted this program as a stumbling success and looked forward to improving it for the next meeting

LEGO CLUB V 2.0!

Space- We moved it upstairs in our storytime area to allow for more space! It involved a little extra leg work to put up the tables, but it's worth it to not have kids packed like sardines! We were also extra vigilant in our clean up ("There are over 200 hands in this room right now! We can all clean up a little bit!") as reminding everyone that babies share this space too and we don't want little piece around that could make it unsafe.

Teamwork- We still wanted to encourage working together since it had such great results last time. We did make space at our puzzle table as a "Free Play" table for little ones or anyone who didn't want to work as a group. However this table didn't get to enter for voting. Everyone did get their creation photographed and put up on our Facebook page to show them we were proud of everything that they made.

Voting- I thought about not letting the group of kids who won be able to eligible to win again, but that seemed to be a more complicated issues. I don't think we wanted the kids to feel like this was a competition, but to enjoy the experience. Also I had to find another way to make the voting process more smooth and anonymous.
We had 6 tables for building and each table had a number and a color for their "team". I created little squares of paper with the numbers and corresponding colors. (1-Red, 2- Green etc.) After cutting them out I paper clipped them together in stacks of 5- leaving out one color. So all the bundles that I would pass out to the kids at the 1-Red table, did not have a red piece of paper in it so they couldn't vote for themselves! We also asked the kids to vote for their favorite two creations. When the little slips of paper where put in the box I passed around to each table, they could put two in. Color coordinating them made it easy for me to eye ball and count when I dumped them out. We also did not announce who was second and who was first. I did have parents who helped and offered advice, but didn't insist on taking control or wanted to vote.

Here is a look at our Version 2.0 We had over 100 people show up versus 60 last time!

So many kids we can't fit them all in one picture!

This week winners!

Win Some/Lose Some: Library Programming for All?

This will be my 4th year doing a summer reading program in my current position. My director and head librarian seem to be on the same page of how they want to the reading program to go and what we want our library to be represented as to the public. For summer, we go big. We spend a good chunk of our budget on professional performers (magicians, bands, animals programs etc.). We have these family programs/performances twice a week. We are given more money for storytimes and make a point of providing more programs for school age kids (Grades K-5)

Why? Because those kids are out of school! They have time to come to the library! We only have the chance to so a school age programs once a month during the school year, and most of our attendees are homeschool kids to begin with. We want to have several opportunities for kids of this age group to participate in activities of varying interests.

From September through May we have three separate storytime classes for three separate age groups which results in nine chances to visit the library in one week to hear a storytime! Versus the 1 or 2 school age programs we have a month during the school year. In summer, we scale back and offer two sessions for preschool during the week, one for babies, and one for toddlers.

And boy....does that tick people off.

Every summer, I seem to give the same speech to try to explain that because of the extra programing we offer for families and older kids, we don't have the schedule to provide the same storytime presentation we offer during the school year. I always strive to presents a pro over a con. "I'm sorry that we are not offering storytime at our normal time for summer. I can show you our schedule of great performers and programs for you and your child will enjoy!"

Our biggest grief come from our stay at home parents who are understandably our largest crowd of storytime participants. We offer storytime for babies and toddlers in the evenings. I think we are the only library in the large metro area that offers programs at the time for that age and with a good reason. It allows working moms and dads to attend storytime with their little ones. So I'm biased when patrons try to plead their case that the only storytime session should be in the morning instead of the evening because I'm a working mom. Currently, I'm unable to take my kid to baby story time anywhere because of my schedule and the times they are offered (and I live in an area with 30 plus libraries!) So if we eliminated the evening option of storytime, we eliminate the chance for any working parents to attend after their 9-5 day. Sorry, but this strikes me as grossly unfair. (Even before I became a parent I knew that this option was not a good one) Not everyone has the luxury of being able to stay home with their kids all day (and engage in their learning and literacy at home) but stay at home moms are able to attend a family program or storytime in the evening.

While libraries usually pull out all the stops for summer, we are still limited in some regards. Recently a patron complained to me that we don't have enough activities for babies. Her child was the same age as my daughter and the most of the programs were geared towards older kids. I was at a lost for words for a second (besides exclaiming "Duuhhh!") We mostly cater to books and readers, not necessarily a entertainment center for little kids. If you walked into a Toy R' Us, and found out they only sold one toy for babies, I could understand being annoyed. But a library? What did you think we would have? (okay I'm biased her because I work at a library and I'm the mother of baby who besides crawling and making messes, can't do anything without my help)

I do think after each encounter because I do hate turning people away or the thought of discouraging them from the library. I think, look at the calendar and try to see if there is any possible way we could offer more to our under 3 crowd. But alas, we can't add something without removing something else! To add morning storytimes would mean one of the family programs would have to leave and I think there would be more of an uproar if we canceled popular family events to cater to a handful of patrons.

Lesson of the day....

Who? What? Summer?

Those sees to be my thoughts. I have been so busy with summer reading I have to keep reminding myself that it actually started! Our library decided to do its own program this year instead of working with the large city library like we have in the past.

Along with new storytimes for toddlers, programs for teens and tweens, I’ve also been responsible for publications, calendars, making reading records and all our display material. No joke, I can’t put into words how exhausted I am after putting this all up because my quality of speech has decreased since Thursday. My speech is scattered and slurred not from drinking, but because my brain power has been sucked out of me with every new issue I’ve had to face!

But the time has come! We has our kick off party this morning with way over 300 people in attendance. When one of my non-children's coworker asked me how our kick off party went my relpy was "Well no one died, so that's a good thing?"

We are using the collaborative theme Fizz Boom Read!

 

"Power Up!" with our picture books

My one gripe about our current library is that the entire kids section is dominated by bulletin boards and even above that lots of dead space. So when it comes to decorating we have alot of space to fill and if I had to make displays that covered every inch, we would be wasting a ton of ink and paper. Also I have to take it down in two months. We need a new library/design for many reasons but this just one of them.

 

Our "Finisher"Wall or Fill 'Er Up! Wall. This year it is beakers filled with atoms (bright colored paper circles) This wall is over 20 feet long so there are many more beakers I can't fit in the picture. I will say that every year I've done Summer Reading, we have filled our finisher wall and then some! This year, the circles are going to be blank. No names! Something new but with good reason. Our volunteers usually forget to hand out the item for the kid to put their name in, and often kids fill them out on the wrong side, upside down, and then put their whole name, phone number and school on them (yes seriously) I don't know why (bragging rights?) but we don't want to post such private information in a public space. So we'll celebrate our finishers anonymously this year.

Program Bulletin Board

 



I desperatly wanted to make this look like the Periodic Table of Elements, but then it wouldn't look like a calendar and that's really the point.

 

 

 

Only 8 more weeks of summer reading to go. We are doing some awesome new things at our library this year. I'm changing my story time format. We are doing sensory tables "labs" for the toddlers. It's going to be great and crazy! But a little crazy never hurt anyone.

Teen Passive Ideas-Summer Reading

Do you do passives with teens at your library?

We do. In fact, our passive numbers are higher than the number of teens that participate in our programs! Because we don't have a teen room and low attendance at our programs, I'm forever trying to catch the "kids in the stacks". In the past we've had opinion polls, library bingo and trivia. During the summer I try to do a new passive every week.

I'm sharing some of my ideas for this summer. Our theme is Fizz Boom Read. Feel free to borrow anything you might be interested in using at your library!

Post it Note Art Show

We've had varying success with art share walls for teens in the past. On the scale of a wall full of lovely artwork as good to chasing off two punk boys defacing others artwork as horrible. I got so mad at them I swore off teen art walls forever.
I lied. I can't help it. I love art.

Quiz: Guess the Symbol

I have a sheet of symbols of the nine planets and the signs of the zodiac for teens to fill out and drop in out box to earn a prize. I've included the Dewey decimal numbers of books on astronomy and astrology so they can research and find the answers. That's not cheating in my opinion. Begging the librarian to look up the answers for you, is.

Periodic Word Generator

I saw a graphic on the internet were nerdy was spelled out with periodic elements Nerdy. I made colorful slips of paper with 3-4 boxes as well as a mini table of elements. I'm pretty horrible about word games like Boggle and Scrabble so I'm curious to see what the teens come up with.

Binary Code Messages
Similar to the word generator. I'm giving them the option of posting messages on the wall or taking them home. If you have the Collaborative Summer Reading Program manual for "Fizz Boom Read" there is a section in the kids' program that has the binary code and fun activities you can try with it.

Quiz: Robot Roll Call
For this quiz, I printed out pictures of famous robots from big and little screen. Fill out a sheet with your guesses of who's who and bonus points if you can tell were they are from. Using books and the internet is allowed because I threw in some tough ones. There is Robo-cop, EVE, R2-D2. But do you remember these guys?

Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo of MST3K

I'm pairing each passive with a display. Sticking with our science theme, I'll have book displays featuring  the Science Fiction genre:

Time Travel books/Doctor Who, Mad Scientist books, Steampunk and Dystopian.

Afterschool Programs- The Art of Japan

I will be the first to admit that these types of programs aren’t my forte. I work with teens as well as doing toddler storytime so I seemed to work the polar opposites of the youth services spectrum (but you are more than welcome to comment that teens often act like toddlers) I feel kinda of “flubby” when I have to meet in the middle and do programs for kids in Grade K-5. I came back from maternity leave and got put on the spot to do a program to fill our “Book A Trip” after school programs. I wanted to do a more arts oriented program because trying to teach…well makes me feel like a teacher. And I’m not a teacher! (Nothing against teachers but I wasn’t train to be one. They do a great job at their job. I do not)

I was nervous about making the kids draw and anticipating the usually frustrations that comes with art projects. I once had a 10 year old yell at me that “He can’t use a paintbrush”

And….it was an amazing program! I had a blast and so did the kids. I also had a full house which was impressive because it was subzero temperature that day.

I did a quick slide show about different art forms from Japan. I did some that were new and unfamiliar like ink wash painting and woodblock printing, but I also included familiar stuff like origami and anime.

Then came out main craft were the kids drew they own Koi fish. I found the instructions for the project here from an art teacher. I figured there would be apprehensions when I showed them my painting of the fish and told them we were going to make one just like it. There were whispers of doubt, but once they started, they were completely focused and made beautiful creations.

We used watercolor paper and sharpies for the drawing. For the water color effects, the kids scribbled on the paper with washable markers and then used paint brushes with water to spread the colors around. It worked just like watercolors with half the mess and double the control.

My last activity was Bento boxes. I did bento boxes as my first teen activity the first summer reading I was hired and it bombed. Hard. I had teens tell me they were throwing away their food because they hated it. This time however it was great. I made hot dog octopus, rice balls, olive and cream cheese penguins and rice crackers with cheese cut out. Not only did the kids gobble up everything without complaint, they even took up my dare to eat nori (dried seaweed) and some of them even liked it!

The kids got to take home their own bento box to decorate at home. Since we are no longer ordering VHS tapes, we had plenty of clear VHS boxes available for crafting and they are most useful.

Ah if only all my programs could go this well…

Storytime From the Liberry: A Whale of a Tale

A toddler storytime about whales?  Hey why not?

A Whale of a Tale

Probably a rather obscure topic to teach to 2 and 3 year olds, but something I wanted to tackle right from the start when I took over storytime from a coworker.  My inspiration and title of the program oddly came from the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (yes the old Disney live action one) Well not so much the film, who only highlight for me are Peter Lorre and seal but the song in the beginning of the film, sung by Ned Land (Kirk Douglas)

Inspiration such as Baby Beluga, songs and rhymes came later. You can also combine this theme with ocean animals in general, sailors or pirates. I use sailors in mind because I already have a story time devoted to just pirates. If you are looking to incorporate Ready to Read skill, I pair this storytime up with Singing. You can play noises of whale calls and explain that whales talk by singing and they sing loud so others can hear them from far away. So let’s sing loud and clear today

BOOKS:

If you want to see a Whale by Julie Fogliano

A rather quirky  non-linear books, but very charming with great illustrations! I adore this team’s other book “And Then it’s Spring” I cut down some of the length and asked my storytime friends to be sure and tell me if they see a whale. Many of them got very excited about trying to find it.

A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems

I am on a desperate crusade to get my toddlers (and their grownups!) to appreciate the humor of Mo Willems. This one is great because of the change to do three voices. Elephant, Piggie and the great big voice of the whale.

Baby Beluga by Raffi

Ahhh son, this is my jam! I was born in the mid 80’s so I was a toddler right as Raffi was making it big. My parents apparently dropped some serious dough to get me tickets to his concert when he came to town. They let me place this tape on loop and sang all the songs with me. Even to this day when I hear the song Baby Beluga, I hear it in my father’s voice still singing to me.

You can use this as a song or with a book if you have a copy. I’ve sung along with the recording in the past, but I decided to ditch that this time and sing it a cappella. If you sing it with the recording, heads up you’ll be flipping pages real fast and have to deal with an awkward break in the middle.

Kavna, the inspiration for "Baby Beluga" Sadly, she passed away in 2012 at age 46.

Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea by Jan Peck

Lots of sea creatures to see and repetitive text. I encourage my friends to wave hello and good bye at every animal we meet. Also I handed out puppets of sea creatures (“our reading buddies”) and would look out if I could see the octopus or the shark in the crowd when we read about them.

Sailor Boy Jig by Margaret Wise Brown

This is such a great book for movement, but my branch has one of the very few copies left. (*Clutches it for dear life*)

More December Displays!

"Unwrap the Gift of Reading"

Again-not a completely original idea of mine. We did this last year and decided to repeat it again. I put a bit more effort making the graphic this time so I think we can save them and hopefully use them again in 2014. Similar to the Blind Date with a Book idea some library use around Valentine's Day.

I reused the green background from a co-workers previous display, which is great because 1) it fit the color scheme and 2) I suck at putting up the background paper!

Mine always ends up with tears (in the paper) and tears (mine weeping at my failure)

Members of the Youth Services staff select their favorite books or anything that sounds intrusting and cover them in wrapping paper, leaving only the bar-code showing in the back.  Suggestions are attached on a gift tag on the front and instruction that allow patrons to unwrap their books only after they have checked them out and taken them home.

Detective stories and gourmet cooking. Can you guess what book this is?

Goodbye Movember..Hello Decemeber Displays!

Time to switch the displays in the teen section. Thankfully I was able to do it without interrupting any patrons, who usually love to sit in the armchairs at the end caps just as I'm ready to work on them.

This was my display for "Movember" I've seen variations on the mustache display posted about the internet and decided to give it a try. The letters are all hand cut and the result was quite striking. (IMHO)

Absent from this photo is my mustache box. 

I've been trying a new "book-mark-marketing" campaign to give away freebie or passives in my displays as well as promote upcoming teen events. I hand cut over 100 mustaches and attached them onto craft sticks to serve as bookmarks and general silliness. 

"Please take one" pleaded the little box that held them.  While I hope most of them got into the hands of their intended audience, most did not. They were raided after preschool story times and by flocks of second grade girls. But the most annoying was a shevler (an adult) took two dozen for herself and then gave them away to circ staff. Rather awkward situation trying to ask for them back, as they were given as "gifts"

So I just placed them in the books as bookmarks and I think maybe a few books went home. Happy to have brought joy to some folks....but I couldn't spend the entire month of November cutting out mustaches.

Onto December! "Make Reading a Hobbit" at the suggestion of my boss who liked the ALA poster but didn't have time to order it. We had some Hobbit book marks already on hand. I'm waiting to see how long our one available copy of "The Hobbit" stays on the shelf (Who wouldn't want to read it with Martin Freeman on the cover and his face on a super cute bookmark?)