Tag Archives: library program

Play & Learn

This summer, I worked with a fellow librarian to start a nine-week play series for ages 0-3 and their families. Play & Learn quickly turned into one of my (and our patrons) favorite programs of the summer.

Each Wednesday, from 9:30-10:30 am, parents and their little ones interacted with 10-12 activities we placed around our large meeting room. On average, we had 80-120 visitors each week. People came and went on their own schedule–for some babies, 10 minutes was more than enough time in the crowded room; others enjoyed a full hour of play and even stayed to help with clean-up.

  • Play & Learn at its busiest!

Some activities repeated each week (bubbles!), while others rotated in and out throughout the summer. We grouped our activities into four categories and made sure to have a mix of these each week:

  • Fine Motor
  • Gross Motor
  • Sensory
  • Belly Babies (for our littlest prewalkers)

We picked activities that kids of all developmental abilities could enjoy, such as ball pit balls in muffin tins.

Some of our most popular activities included:

  • Cereal Boxes and Straws
  • Baby Pool Play
  • Pom Pom Drop
  • Sensory Tiles
  • Tumbling Mats
  • Sensory Bags & Bottles
  • “Messy” Sensory Play (rice, beans, sand, easter grass, water)
  • Instrument/Sound Play

This program is particularly great because you can adapt it to whatever budget and space you have available. We have very large crowds in the summer, and this program was able to meet the needs of parents and little ones while appealing to a large range of ages. We included a mix of purchased play items and items that parents could re-create at home cheaply–another library could do a similar program just focusing on one of these categories, to save staff time (pre-purchased items) or money (cheap, home-made items).

Play & Learn also encouraged parent-child interaction. Each activity included laminated sheets on the floor nearby, explaining the value of the activity along with questions and vocabulary words to encourage parent engagement.

Play & Learn has already been requested multiple times by our community to be continued this fall. While that cannot happen, unfortunately, due to our busy school-year programming schedule, I am looking forward to this program’s return next summer.

Programming By a Thread

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I embroidered as a hobby. And occasionally I will come up with the grand idea that I will once again take up this hobby, so I buy oodles of threads and embroidery flosses in anticipation of projects that I will undoubtedly create…..except the actual creating of embroidered objects does not happen.

This means that I’ve got stacks on stacks on stacks, floss on floss on floss and is good news for all of my teens because that makes string art is an easy possibility for a program!

String art is a crazy simple program to produce, all you need is:

  • Wood
  • Finishing nails
  • Hammers
  • Embroidery floss
  • Paint is optional
  • Templates are optional as well

You can always buy wood boards off of Amazon:

Or you can be like me and run to your favorite tool supply store, buy some wood planks and ask them to cut them to your desired lengths for a small fee. After all, you might already need to go there to pick up hammers and finishing nails and why not make it one trip. (Pro-tip: Home Depot and Lowes make the first two cuts for free on each board)

Overall teens are pretty good about waiting for their turn and sharing hammers, but you will need several hammers on hand. You can probably beg, borrow, or steal some from co-workers if you do not have a small cache of them. I currently have 8 hammers in my supply, but after the popularity of my last program for string art I will need to purchase a few more to cut down on the wait times between each teen needing them.

I like to supply some simple templates of patterns as well as blank paper and pencils for those that want to be unique and create their own designs. There are a bunch of templates all over Pinterest, but I have found that designs turn out best when you have nails spaced 1-3 inches apart, depending on the shape. That also means that you can never have enough finishing nails on hand. Whatever number you think each piece will take, double it and make sure you have at least 1 emergency pack squirreled away for use when you run out at the end of the program with a couple of teens still creating things.

I begin String Art by explaining what tools and supplies everyone will have access to and go over basic safety rules for using hammers and nails for everyone. A small stack of planks and a bowl of nails is placed in the center of each table grouping and 4-6 teens can easily sit at station with enough room for their projects.I put paints, tape, and template supplies at a table near the front of the room so everyone can have access to them and distribute hammers to the tables after the general rules and safety talk.

The entire program runs at the pace of the teen creators. Some will be faster than others, some will make more in depth pieces, some will focus painting the board and mapping out their outline, while others will just jump right in and start hammering away like they are wielding Mjölnir. There is no right or wrong way for them to create and as you can see a lot of different creations come out of it.

Teen Advisory Board

Lots of libraries have advisory boards for their teenagers. A place where teens can voice their opinions, ask for materials and programs, and meet peeps from different schools (or even homeschoolers). When I became the Teen Librarian at Westerville, I inherited two: Junior Teen Advisory Board (JTAB) for middle schoolers and Teen Advisory Board (TAB) for High Schoolers.

At my previous library, at the advice and mentoring of my director, I tried to create a Teen Advisory Group. It somehow devolved from a group that met to help brainstorm, create, and inspire programming to being just another program I had to continually create new material for. Over the course of one semester it changed from being TAG: Teen Advisory Group to TAG: Teen Arts and Games, a hangout group that focused on activities and crafts.

It could have been the intense, once a week, schedule I was asked to implement for meetings. It could have been that I was a newly minted librarian and I was still testing the waters on what my program style was. The giant learning curve figuring out my new community coming from Chicagoland to western Kentucky. Or that no one knew what was going to happen with teen programming as I was literally the first Teen Librarian for Henderson Library and County. But somewhere along the way TAG changed and it was no longer an advisory group.

Arts & crafts and gaming programs are important and needed for teens, but that was not what I had prepped for. The new direction meant that I was quickly burning through all my programming ideas, that should have been spread over many months, and quickly burning out. During the small break in programming we had over winter break I was able to regroup and plan out some fun weekly activities without losing my mind but was never able to get a true advisory group off the ground.

And then I moved to Westerville, where there was already a Teen Advisory Board in place. And after acting as a substitute Teen Librarian during a maternity leave, I became the Teen Librarian…and wasn’t sure what to do with the advisory boards I inherited. After all my last foray into this type of programming fizzled out and turned into something completely different.

It was time for my new teens to school me, yo.

I was up front and honest about my experience with advisory groups to the JTAB and TABbers and asked how the program currently ran. Then we talked about what they wanted the group to be like. And over the course of one semester it changed from what I inherited to a hybrid of what my teens and I both wanted and needed.

Things that stayed the same:

  • When we meet – once a month on the last Thursday, for about an hour. JTAB at 6pm TAB at 7pm
  • Who it’s for – JTAB is for middle schoolers, TAB is for high schoolers
  • Service hours – as long as a teen signs in on the attendance sheet and participates in the meeting they get an hour of community service
  • Snacks – are served and enjoyed at the meetings, but can’t be taken home at the end
  • What we do – share wants for programming, library materials, and random conversations/ideas
  • Marketing – All members (including me) talk to teens in the community about coming to check out the fun we have at JTAB/TAB
  • Officers – TAB members elect officers for roles and more or less run the program with librarian guidance as needed
  • ARCs – anyone that attends can snag one ARCs to take home

Things that changed:

  • How to join – Show up! No more applying and interviewing, you show up you get to participate
  • Snacks – options are now a combo of healthy and sugary, but take into account shared allergies, religious dietary restrictions, and packaging (being able to save some snacks for the next meeting is a big plus!)
  • What we do – Create and run programs independently. Teens still help create programs and activities, but the onus of an entire program is no longer on their shoulders
  • Marketing – teens create special campaigns and activities to spread the word on the fun that we have at JTAB/TAB
  • ARCs Frenzy – anyone that attends can snag one or several ARCs to take home
  • Book reviews – JTAB and TABbers can fill out bookmark book reviews stating why they loved or hated a library book that gets tucked into it’s respective title

Small changes in how things went made a big difference for how we all view the advisory boards. Teens still get agency by sharing their ideas and wants, but don’t have the same pressures of having to be present all the time for everything. I don’t have have an overloaded schedule of crazy and have help in coming up with programs. And we all get snacks and hang time with people who’s lives may not cross paths if it weren’t for the library.

Baby Prom

Fancy clothes. Lots of music. Awkward dancing. Awesome (or maybe not so awesome) decor. My fellow librarian, Sarah, and I agree that there is only one thing that can make a standard American prom better — babies. Enter Baby Prom.

After reading about Akron-Summit County Public Library’s Baby Prom via the ALSC blog, we decided to tap into our very large baby and toddler population (storytimes for those ages in the summer regularly reach 80-100 people) to create our own Baby & Toddler Prom experience.

About 50 parents and little ones joined us for an hour on a Friday afternoon for music, crafts, dancing, and fun. Babies and toddlers were dressed in a variety of styles, from those with fancy dresses and all the accessories to those in their everyday storytime attire.

Baby Prom Decor

Prom needs a great photo op and awesome decorations, and we delivered with 40″ mylar balloons. We purchased these in prepackaged sets as the words “baby” and “prom”, making them significantly cheaper than individually purchased letters, even if the gold tones don’t match exactly.

We created a photo background with silver mylar and half of a balloon arch. The dark blue, gold, silver, and white colors continued around the room.

Dance Floor

The center of the room contained our amazing dance floor, designed by my coworker, Sarah. We call these “liquid floor tiles”, and they are a hit at all of our programming. The liquid is contained inside of 9×12 lamination pouches, ironed closed. Most include a mixture of baby oil, water, food coloring, and other items (foam shapes, glitter, etc.). The ironed lamination pouches have duct tape around the edges to further secure the liquid. Our industrial hole punch creates spaces in the foam tiles so the bags can be zip-tied to the tiles. We have had a few leak over the last few months of use, but overall they hold up great.

Baby Prom Music

The bulk of the program involved our little over one-hour playlist and a variety of manipulatives to keep the little ones engaged. We used a combination of popular music and upbeat kid favorites.

Since the little ones were not interested in dancing for an hour straight (much to my dismay), we planned for a variety of manipulatives that were distributed at regular intervals, including:

  • Shaker Eggs
  • Bells
  • Scarves
  • Puppets
  • Bubbles
  • Balloons (part of balloon drop finale)

We left all items out on the dance floor till the end of the program, no matter when they were introduced.

Baby animal videos played on the big screen throughout the event.

Limo Rides

Babies could take a break from the dance floor to take a wagon limo ride provided by one of our teen volunteers. Not every baby participated, but one of our regular storytime attendees spent a majority of the program in a wagon because she enjoyed it so much.

Corsages

Parents could make a simple wrist corsage for their baby by layering colored felt flowers and weaving through a velcro strip.

Balloon Drop Finale

We planned to end our Baby Prom with a balloon drop finale. We wove together two dollar store tablecloths, attached them to the ceiling, and stuffed them with balloons. The balloon drop worked, though something in the execution wasn’t quite right, as all the balloons fell on me (the person pulling the string) instead of out of the other side of the tablecloth and onto the babies. It was a little awkward, but the babies didn’t seem to mind.

The Best Laid Plans

Sometimes, no matter how much you have prepared for a program. No matter how much you promoted it. No matter how excited you are…no one shows up.

It makes you question your teen librarian skills. Are you still cool? Still hip? Still with it?

I had a program like that this past week: Silent Card Castles.

The premise of the program is super easy. Over the course of an hour, teens use index cards to free build structures however they want to. There are no building rules beyond build a thing. Cards can be bent and mutilated beyond repair, ripped in half, stacked however they want. And, occasionally, (every 10-15 minutes) you throw out a challenge to them that they have to complete. Things like:

  • connect your structure to at least 1 other person’s creation
  • everyone stop building and spin around 3 times, then switch places with another builder
  • 30 second dance break
  • lights off, build in the dark
  • destroy those creations Godzilla style, then pick up all the cards

And throughout the hour teens are supposed to remain silent. It is meant to help recharge their brains thinking of ways to communicate without words, help them Zen out a bit with the creative but simple task of building things, and have an almost nostalgic kind of fun where they are completely unplugged for just a little bit. All you need to run this program is a room, a bunch of index cards, and some teenagers.

…..I had 2 of those 3 things on Wednesday.

In the past, when I’ve done this program I have had stellar attendance for something that is not food or tech related. My teens have found the fun in the simplicity of it all. Quietly groaning over the challenges I threw at them. Abandoning the silence rule and laughing hysterically when they smashed everything to the ground at the end.

But even with my promotion in the schools before summer break, even with social media and remind blasts, even with JTAB and TAB members telling other teens that they have come to to this is the past and that “it’s more fun than it sounds”. I was alone in a room until I admitted defeat and closed the program.

I had to enter a 0 in the attendance record and let my manager know that this time, not one teenager came to my program. I felt like I failed as a teen librarian. Like I failed my kids in providing them something fun and educational during the summer months when I am actually able to give them more varied programming. And in my little moment of professional self doubt, I threw the world’s smallest pity party.

But after taking a deep breath and utilizing the same skills I had hoped to foster in teens during the program. I reminded myself that even when a program fails. Even if a program falls of the rails with no hope of getting back on track. Even if in the middle of it all it turns into a dumpster fire. As long as I keep trying to engage teens, advocate for their wants/needs, and continue to grow with them. I am still a good teen librarian.

So when you have a program fail like mine did, take a deep breath, pick yourself back up, make yourself a s’more using that dumpster fire, and try again. Cause you are still a good teen librarian and you got this!

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.

Looking for More?

Check out Virtual Dog Man Trivia and Virtual Dog Man BINGO.

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.

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:

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

Dog Man 3Doodler Station

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

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.

If you feed them, they will come … Cake Pops!

There is a phrase that is bandied about quite often when discussing teen programming: “If you feed them, they will come.” It is on message boards and comment sections and Facebook posts. It is the first response to anyone posing the question: How do I get teens to come to programs?

I am not denying its positive response. Snacks do bring in a bodies for programs, but I also want to have snacks make sense and make sure that my teens are engaged in the program. Creative food programs for the win!

This year, I had a cake pops program lined up as a part of summer reading. It sort of came as a suggestion from my TAB group. I say sort of because I was actually out sick the day of the TAB meeting and my substitute *cough cough, Annamarie* wrote down the suggestion of a cake pop program. It turns out it was actually a suggestion for a K-pop program. And while I still haven’t tackled a K-pop program, cake pops were definitely a hit regardless of how it came to be.

The original concept I was going to try was a Nailed It/Failed It style, and in fact it was even named Cake Pops: Nailed It/Failed It in the library’s program guide. However, when looking at the amount of tools each teen would need to try and recreate sample cake pops, I decided to scrap that and just let my kiddos play with their food.

By dropping the Nailed It/Failed It aspect of the program I was able to focus using my budget solely on basic cake pop supplies, instead of including any piping tips or bags. Changing how my funds would be used also meant that the number of participants could increase as I could buy more delicious supplies.

Now it was time to figure out a list of everything that would be needed to create cake pops and not make a giant mess in the process. Here’s what I came up with:

  • Disposable table cloths
  • Paper plates
  • Disposable bowls
  • Plastic spoons
  • Mini cupcake wrappers (completely optional, and I probably wouldn’t use them in the future)
  • Baggies
  • Sucker sticks
  • Almond bark (or candy melts, or tempered chocolate)
  • Slow cooker(s)
  • Food coloring
  • Sprinkles, mini M&Ms, chocolate chips, etc.
  • Donut holes

I went back and forth on what to use as the actual cake for the program; letting the teens make real cake pops by smooshing cake into balls or with donut holes? Ultimately, due to limited access to a sink and a freezer and the time constraint of the program, I went with donut holes.

On the day of the program I set up tables with groups of 6 chairs, had supply stations at the front of the room, covered everything with tablecloths, and put mixtures of the decorating supplies out on each table. After a brief tutorial on how to make a cake pop (directions in notes field below), I released the teens to gather their melted almond bark, donut holes, and sticks before having fun creating deliciousness.

During all the fun it came up that I had never had a cake pop before, even though I had made them many times in my former career as a pastry chef. So of course it was a momentous event when I had my very first cake pop during the program.

Note: Cake Pop Construction

  1. Dip the cake pop stick into the melted almond bark, wait 5 seconds and then place the stick into the donut hole. Patience is key! If you rush the dry time on the almond bark glue your cake pop can come off the stick very easily.
  2. Once the donut hole has adhered to the stick, dip the pop into the almond bark and gently shake or twirl off excess. Once the almond bark begins hardening you can begin adding your decorations. This part can sometimes be tricky – if you go too fast some of your decorations can slide off, but if you go too slow they could need more glue to adhere.
  3. Enjoy all the cake-y goodness, but remember to snap some photos first!

Escape Room Tips

If your teens are anything like mine, every escape room you plan gets filled in minutes and it is a perennial request during JTAB (Junior Teen Advisory Board) and TAB (Teen Advisory Board) meetings. 

The problem is, escape rooms can be labor intensive to plan and are really only fun when it is a smaller group solving the puzzles. And while there are a lot of escape room plans and packages that you an buy, they aren’t always able to be adapted to your room space or your teen’s interests and can get really expensive. So, to help save monies and because my themes always seem to be weird I opt to plan my own running the same room multiple time in a week. 

Here are my top tips, tricks, and cheats for help with escape rooms:

Crowd source your themes

You do not need to be the one that comes up with the fun theme of the room. in fact, they are better when the idea comes directly from your teenagers. Do they like Stranger Things or Riverdale or Sherlock? Now, you not only have permission to binge watch all the TV (in the name of research of course), but also have a LOT of solid and identifiable resources for clue plants or Easter eggs.

Round out your story

Regardless of where you start in the escape room planning process remember that you need to have a set story line for it to make any sense. Why do you need to get out of the room? What happens at the end of the time limit? How did the group of people escaping all wind up here to begin with? These are all important parts to address before you begin to build the fun puzzle parts.

Map it out

The most exciting part of building an escape room is creating puzzles and clues, but before you start buying and building all the locks and ciphers that you’ve seen on Pinterest you need to map out what steps your players are going to need to accomplish in order to escape the room. I like to keep it as a simple flow chart with 3-5 steps.

Do this > then this > then this > then do this thing > and now you escape!

This same step should be used when you decide what puzzles you are creating to make sure that they flow into each other well. Unless your goal is see how fast people rage quit your escape room, you want your puzzles to make sense with the story and how they should be progressing in the escape of the room.

Invest in your stuff

Do you see yourself running more than one escape room at your library? If you do put the time in to buy some items that can be reused. Buy some locks that let you reset the combination or pattern, get some that have keys and ask around for a whole bunch of random keys as well (co-workers are great for keys of no known origin or use). See a cheapo toolbox that has a latch? Nab it! Quality pieces that can take a lot of wear and tear or a little bit of a beating are your best friend for clues and puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles…

Everyone has a few that are beat up and can’t circulate anymore or maybe are missing a piece or two. Recycle that puzzle! Cover the top with a new picture or clue that can only be solved when put together. Put a whole bunch of numbers on the puzzle backboard and when the pieces you have are placed the missing pieces highlight certain numbers needed for a code.

Be vaguely specific

Keep in mind that most escape rooms run for an hour. That means that they need to feasibly be solved within that hour, so the more obscure your puzzles are the harder they become to solve and more time is taken off of that countdown. Puns, double meaning words, or even a bad descriptions of how to accomplish the puzzle are great ways to be vaguely specific. And remember to practice and time completions for puzzles and clues before you open it up to the public whenever possible. The number of problems to solve and how they link together is just as important as how difficult they are.

Get crafty and make your own props

Some clues you just need to create yourself. If you are like me and those weird themes just keep getting inspired by your teens or popping into your sleep deprived brain there are not going to be easy to change up clues that others have already created and given up to the library collective or Pinterest. But even if you aren’t a crafty person by nature there are a few websites that I love that help you in creating the props that you need.

  • Festisite – update a template or create your own IDs, money, credit cards, or concert tickets. You can even edit company logos to become clues or better fit your themes
  • Fantasy Map Generator – randomly created maps for your fantasy and sci-fi needs. Easily customize your map
  • Newspaper Clippings – create a quick newspaper article and have it actually look like a newspaper
  • Receipts – spend some of that money you made on Festisite and buy some cool items…or at least create a basic receipt for that hoverboard
  • Phone Conversations – create a fake text conversation and attach it to a toy phone from Dollar Tree. Fastest prop ever!
  • Blueprint Creator – there are tons of opensource materials for building floor plans for rooms and buildings, but I really like the simple click and add function that this one allows.

Mix up the challenges

Not everything needs to be a thinking puzzle. The fun of escape rooms is the overall experience so throw in some physical challenges with your puzzles. Things that the players will need to DO to solve the problem. Getting through a maze, moving an obstacle in their path, and retrieving items from other areas of the room are easy ways to incorporate a physical challenge in your escape room.

Note: My current work in progress escape room is Schrodinger’s Nyan Cat. Nyan Cat has been captured and placed in Schrodinger’s Box and only by solving puzzles and challenges can Nyan Cat be freed before the universe implodes in Pop-tart rainbow-ness. I have 2 days of escape room fun using this as my theme and slowly driving my kids nuts by playing the Nyan Cat song on a loop for the hour that they are finding their locks, combinations, and clues. Oh yes, there will be pictures.

1 … 7 8