Last summer, a coworker and I ran a very successful baby and toddler play program. Each week, about 80-100 parents and little ones joined us for a variety of interactive activities.
Six months ago, when we were planning for May-August 2020, we were thrilled to be able to offer Play & Learn again this summer, plus an additional four weeks in May.
Then COVID happened.
Obviously we weren’t expecting a pandemic, but luckily we were able to shift our plans to adapt this program virtually for the month of May, creating Play & Learn at Home.
Each week, Lisa (my coworker) and I emailed caregivers registered for Play & Learn at Home a video and instruction sheet for two DIY play activities, made from objects commonly found around the house.
Before there was Play & Learn, there was the idea of Science, Baby. A presentation at an annual ALA Conference by Brooklyn Public Library about their Science Baby! program opened my eyes to how much more babies can do than what many baby storytime outlines imply. Babies are so much more than passive observers–their brains are developing faster than they ever will for the rest of their lives–combined. STEM concepts do not need to be limited to older children. In fact, babies are the perfect example of little scientists as they learn everything about the world:
My own Science Baby! program finally became a reality during our winter storytime break in late December. Seventy babies and adults joined me for a morning of baby play with a STEM twist.
Activities were broken down into a few rough categories. They included:
Some of these stations just involved putting out an item, like mirrors for mirror play. Others involved some ahead of time creation, like the sensory bottles. Still more involved in-room setup, like attaching sticky contact paper to the wall and building the pool noodle counter by stringing pool noodle pieces to string tied between two chairs.
Each station included a front and back laminated handout explaining the value of the particular activity, what little ones are learning, conversation starters, and vocabulary to stretch conversations with little ones.
We had many older siblings join in the fun as well, particularly enjoying all of the building activities. The sticky contact paper, baby pool play, bubbles, pom pom drop, and sensory bottles were the most well-loved activities.
Most families stayed for about 45-50 minutes. I’m looking forward to bringing this back again someday!
Westerville Library’s youth department includes a pretend play area–our Imagination Station. Each month, a different youth librarian picks a theme and plans a play area designed for ages 3-6.
There are no strict guidelines for this space, but generally we try to:
Pick a theme that appeals to children
Keep all activities safe for all ages
Make clean-up and maintenance manageable for staff
Create materials and activities that are durable
Incorporate early literacy activities
In August 2018, I took over the Imagination Station, creating a play space I had been looking forward to for over a year: a movie theater.
Explore another Imagination Station – Mission Control themed – in this post.
Pretend Play: Movie Theater
While some of my Imagination Stations include a ton of obvious early literacy activities, this one focused almost entirely on pretend play. This appealed to all ages, with evening staff occasionally having to distract our older teens from playing at the Imagination Station so some of the younger toddlers could still enjoy the space. Pretend play has a ton of benefits for all ages, including social-emotional skills, language development, vocabulary building, problem solving skills, and more.
To create the “movie theater” experience, my Imagination Station had a few key areas:
Ticket Booth
Concession Stand (with popcorn machine)
Movie Posters
Showtime Board
Ticket Booth
The ticket booth included our department cash register, stocked with fake money. There was also a bin of tickets with space for cashiers to write down the name of the movie and a “tear-off” side so the tickets could be redeemed to see a movie. We had 3D glasses too–you have to be prepared for those special (and more expensive) movie showings!
Concession Stand
The concession stand included all of the classic movie theater favorites including:
Nachos (yellow felt circles — purchased pre-cut from Etsy for less than $5)
“Cheese” cups (condiment cups with yellow circles hot glued to the bottom
Drink Cups
Candy (purchased at Dollar Tree, emptied of candy, stuffed with stuffing, and wrapped in packing tape)
Popcorn
The popcorn machine was the favorite item of our visitors, but the least favorite item of staff. The popcorn box was a Donatos pizza delivery box from a past lock-in (when we had 20+ pizzas delivered). Holes were cut in each side, and the largest three holes were covered in clear cellophane. Popcorn could be scooped out of the front.
The individual popcorn kernels were crumpled squares of roughly 2″ x 2″ tissue paper. The kids loved the texture and enjoyed unraveling and re-rolling popcorn kernels.
Staff did not enjoy the clean up. I am still apologizing for the popcorn of 2018.
Movie Posters
The movie posters were one of my personal favorite spaces in this Imagination Station. Our awesome marketing department printed the larger “Coming Soon” and “Now Playing” signs on our library banner printer. I laminated those and attached 11″ x 17″ page protectors with a ton of packing tape, leaving the top of the sleeve open.
I printed about 20 kids movie posters that were a little smaller than the sleeves (so that pages dropped in easily). Kids loved swapping the posters out to show what was playing in their theater.
Showtime Board
The last element of my Imagination Station was the “Showtimes” board. This included a collection of showtimes and movie titles (that matched the names on the movie posters) that kids could swap out on our department magnet board.
I love creating these pretend play areas, but this theme was definitely one of my favorites. The kids loved it, asking where the popcorn went months later.
One of my favorite stories was when a child took her dad into our homework help center (during the early afternoon, when it wasn’t in use), turned off the lights, and started the movie, which they “watched” together while eating popcorn in the dark space. Pretend play for the win!
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:
“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.
Westerville Library’s youth department includes a pretend play area–our Imagination Station. Each month, a different youth librarian picks a theme and plans a play area designed for ages 3-6.
There are no strict guidelines for this space, but generally we try to:
Pick a theme that appeals to children
Keep all activities safe for all ages
Make clean-up and maintenance manageable for staff
Create materials and activities that are durable
Incorporate early literacy activities
In June 2019, I took over the Imagination Station, connecting it to our Summer Reading theme, Read and Blast Off.
Explore another Imagination Station – Movie Theater themed – in this post.
Pretend Play: Mission Control
The star of the space themed Imagination Station was our mission control board. I can’t provide much information on how this board was made–our amazing maintenance team took this project on.
Underneath the panel, a battery was attached with some wiring that made the lights turn on and numbers to change when kids flipped the switches. The best feature? The two phones actually talked to one another–if you held one phone to your ear, you could hear a person whispering into the other phone. So cool!
In addition to the amazing mission control board, we provided some simple dress up clothes to encourage pretend play. These included:
Lab Coats (be warned–these are actually kids school uniform shirts)
One of my favorite pretend play items were the jetpacks. These were not the most durable items. I had to remake an entire set halfway through the month. There are many instructions for these on Pinterest, but my steps are outlined below.
How to Make Jetpacks:
Materials(per jetpack):
2 2-Liter Bottles (empty, without lids)
Thick Cardboard
Silver spray Paint
2″ Thick Silver Ribbon
Silver Duct Tape
Hot Glue
Orange, Yellow, or Red Felt
Steps:
Cut cardboard so it is a little wider than the two pop bottles pressed together and just shorter than the height of the bottles.
Use spray paint to paint 2-Liter bottles and thick cardboard piece silver on all sides. Wait to dry.
Measure the silver ribbon to 18-24″ long. Use duct tape to secure to one side of the cardboard, creating a loop for a child to fit their arm. Repeat to create a second arm strap.
Flip the cardboard over and tape the two pop bottles to it. The more tape used here, the better. Wrap tape around all sides of the cardboard and use multiple layers, especially if the jetpack will receive a lot of use.
Cut felt to form flame shapes with a very narrow tip at the opposite end from the flames.
Squirt hot glue into the end of pop bottle and attach the flame pieces.
We also included a pretend play rocket tent for kids to explore.
Fine Motor Skills: Rocket Building
We purchased an additional pack of magnetiles to add to our regular storytime play collection. Kids built elaborate rockets and structures out of them.
Letter Recognition: Mission Codes
To incorporate early literacy, I created a mission codes matching activity. Kids had a bin of capital letters to sort through. They slid the capital letters into the 5″ x 7″ page protectors underneath the matching lowercase letters. The space words changed each week.
Writing: Trace Paths & Checklists
We included blank flight plan tracing sheets (from this Teachers Pay Teachers pack) to help build fine motor skills.
Flop: Moon Rock Exploration
I was really looking forward to this activity. Kids were supposed to explore tin foil balls–“moon rocks”–of different sizes with a magnifying glass, magnet, tweezers, and more. Instead, kids managed to rip off the gloves (which were hot glued, rubber banded, and sealed with shipping tape, plus duct tape later), take the foil balls out of the box, and pull them into tiny pieces.
This box didn’t last a full week–and we confirmed that nothing is kid proof.
