Dog Man to the Rescue!

This summer, we celebrated our library’s most popular book character – Dog Man! Reflecting the passion for this book series and our busy summers, 110 patrons ages 6-10 (and their parents and younger siblings) attended this 1.5 hour event.

Over the last year, all of my unregistered fan-event programs have followed a similar template: two group activities at specific times and a variety of stations that attendees can visit at their leisure. This program was no different.

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Group Activities

Dog Man Trivia

Trivia allowed those kids who have read every book ten times a chance to show off their knowledge. About fifteen minutes into the program, trivia began. Kids wrote down their guesses for all 20 questions before self-grading their trivia sheets on the honor system. Everyone who participated got a bookmark, and the top three participants got to pick, in order of highest to lowest scores, from our trivia prizes.

All questions and answers are available in the PowerPoint below (in addition to my opening program slides). Download the full slideshow here and the trivia answer sheets here.

Dog Man BINGO

While trivia is for the experts, BINGO is for everyone. We play BINGO until everyone has earned a BINGO, with a few rounds so that new folks have a chance to jump in. Winners reached into a brown lunch bag to pull out a random themed 1″ button.

To help kids who do not know every book and character, all images had a number beside them. I called out the number in addition to the name of the image when I pulled each picture out of the jar. All images were on all boards.

Download all 51 BINGO boards here, and the BINGO jar pieces here.

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Stations

Police Academy Obstacle Course

Attendees trained like Dog Man and his police officer friends, making sure they have the physical agility to be prepared to save the day when needed. Today’s obstacle course included:

• Pool noodles strung and hung from the ceiling (not pictured)
• Yarn at crazy angles (laser beams)
• Tunnel
• Pool noodle agility ladder
• Pool noodle jumping hurdles
• River Stones

After completing the obstacle course, attendees received a Dog Man hat.

Petey’s Invention Lab: Robot Craft

You can’t have a Dog man program without some reference to the sometimes nefarious, sometimes good, Petey the Cat. Attendees built a simple robot craft from a cardboard tube and a variety of everyday craft supplies, including construction paper, pony beads, pipe cleaners, pom poms, googly eyes, and more. Tubes were spray-painted silver before the program.

Make Your Own Comic

Dog Man books are comics (made by the George and Harold of Captain Underpants fame), so kids got a chance to make their own comic strips. The blank comic sheets I used are available as free downloads from the picklebums website.

3Doodlers

We bought 3Doodler Start pens as part of a technology grant a few years ago, and I use these magic pens whenever I can. They are very simple to use–turn the pen on, wait for the green light, then push the big orange button to make plastic come out of the tip. The plastic is warm, but never so hot that it risks burning anyone. Patrons leave programs with a physical, 3D-version of whatever they drew.

I provided Dog Man outlines for patrons to use, but I don’t think too many folks had much success with those. Mostly kids made what they wanted.

Button Making

Similar to the 3Doodler pens, our department 2.25″ button maker gets a lot of use, especially at public programs. Attendees selected a 2.25″ button image, cut it into a circle, and brought it and the needed button pieces to a teen volunteer who helped them make the button.

Download the 2.25″ button images here.

Pin the Head on Dog Man

Attendees had one last activity to complete–a simple game of Pin the Head on Dog Man (because pinning hats or badges would be too simple). My awesome marketing department printed a large body and three heads on our banner printer.

Participants got a sticker for completing the activity. These print on Avery 2.5″ round label sheets. Download here.