Wow. That is just about all I can think after hosting our Dinosaur Party last week! It was one of our largest programs I have ever prepped for. We organized our summer reading program differently this year, and I planned our large family programs (like the Dinosaur Party) to run twice, once on Monday evening and again on Tuesday mornings. That way, we are able to offer our large programs to families who need to come in during the evenings, and for families where it works better to come in during the morning. And, because it was the same program, I only had one prep, set-up, and clean-up for two huge programs! What a labor saver!

I planned this out so that we had five activity stations. We had 11 tween/teen volunteers come to lead all the activity stations. That is them up above. 🙂 This is probably the most expensive program I have hosted so far this year, but even so, I would estimate I paid about $80 for everything we needed and the supplies served almost 200 people between both days!

The skinny: Our dinosaur party had a short introduction to bring the group together. This was basically me talking to the kids about dinosaurs, asking the kids to roar, and reading them Dinosaur Roar by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. I had other books to read just in case, including Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp by Carol Diggory Shields but the kids were antsy to begin on the activity stations they saw as they came in. Another great idea is to sing “We are the Dinosaurs” by Laurie Berkner! But, we did one story, and then got right to business! The crowd broke out into five activity stations.  Volunteers manned each station which included making a dinosaur action figure, hatching dinosaur eggs, dinosaur tooth necklaces, dinosaur etchings, and finally a dinosaur fossil dig!

Cost: Again, about $80. Here is what I needed to purchase:

• $40 (Four under bed storage containers from Walmart)
• $8 (1 pound of Critic Acid for the Dino Eggs from Amazon)
• $14 (100 mini dinosaur figures from Amazon)
• $9 (Green cardstock paper for the Dinosaur Toy activity from Amazon)
• $8 (rubbing plates for the Dinosaur Etching activity from Amazon)
• $10 (10’x10′ tarp from Walmart)

And here is what I already had:

• Flour, and oil for the salt dough dinosaur tooth necklaces and dinosaur bones
• Plain white copy paper for the Dinosaur Etchings
• Red and White pony beads for the dinosaur necklaces
• Baking soda and oil for the dinosaur eggs

Set-up: I put a large tarp in the middle of the floor (I think our tarp was 10’X10’. This is where kid sat when to begin the program. After the introduction time, we moved under bed storage containers of sand with buried dinosaur fossils onto this tarp. We had no sand mess. The tarp captured everything. Our janitor did not even know what we did the next day when he mopped the floor! I had the other four activity stations set up around the perimeter of the room. Also, I had the soundtrack to Jurassic Park playing on my CD player throughout the event, which helped set a great atmosphere.

A daycare donated dinosaur plastic decorations, so we taped those to the wall. I also made some fun signs using copyright free dinosaur images saying things like, “Dinosaur Crossing”, “T-Rex Zone”, and “Raptor Speed 40 MPH”.  We printed these out and also hung them on the wall. Here are my Dinosaur Signs.

Activity Stations:

Dinosaur Toy:

We made Glue-lee Printable Dinosaur from Krokotak. This is basically a dinosaur action figure that requires no glue or complicated assembly. So simple, even for younger kids! Kids just cut along the solid black lines, and fold along the single dotted line. They loved it. I copied the image template from their website and was able to resize it so that I could print two dinosaur templates on a standard 8.5”x11” piece of green cardstock.

Dinosaur Eggs

I bought a pack of 100 miniature dinosaurs from Amazon for $14 to “fill” the eggs. To make the eggs, I used the recipe from Fun at Home with Kids. Basically, you mix ½ a cup of baking soda in a small dish pan and add 2 Tablespoons of citric acid. Finally, add 1 teaspoon of oil and mix your dough. Your dough should be dry and crumbly, but able to stick together when you smoosh it under pressure. We needed more oil, though, so we added it in 1 teaspoon increments until our dough was wet enough to stick together. Take a small dinosaur and press the dough around it to cover it and make it look like an egg shape. Let your dough dry overnight. Even though the dough was crumbly when we worked with it, in the morning it was solid!

On the day of the party, I put out a large under bed storage container on the table, filled it with water, and told my teens to give out one egg to every child who came to the table. The kid simply dropped their egg into the water, and the dough began to fizz, eventually revealing the dinosaur as it appeared to “hatch” from the fizzing egg. Super exciting!

Dinosaur Tooth Necklaces:

We made four batches of salt dough using the recipe: 1 cup salt, 2 cups of flour, ¾ cup of water. I shaped the dough into dinosaur teeth about 2” in length. Before the dough dried, I poked a hole through the top at the top of each tooth so that we would be able to string them once they dried to make them into necklaces. The dough needed a few days to dry, but we had them on a shelf in our storage room, so it was not a big deal. You will want to turn the teeth over every day until they are totally dry, so that they will dry evenly. Or, bake them in the over on the lowest heat setting for a few hours. Once they were dry, we strung them with string. On the day of the party, I had the necklaces out with white and red beads. Kids were invited to choose a tooth and string beads on the string. Super fun!

Dinosaur Etchings:

I purchased some rubbing plates from Amazon for $8. I matched the plates we were given with FREE PRINTABLE dinosaur fact sheets from Ed Galaxy. That way, kids could make a rubbing, and learn something about their dinosaur at the same time! This again was a very popular station!

Finally, …drum roll….the Dino Dig  Station!

I bought four under bed storage containers and filled each with a bag of sand. We then made dinosaur-looking bones out of salt dough, and filled the containers with them. I set out paintbrushes in each container, so that kids could use the brushes to “paint” away the sand from the bones. I thought that kids would want to just dig in the sand with their hands, and they did, but nearly every one of them used the paintbrush to brush away the sand when they discovered a bone. Some kids wanted to keep them, but I told the volunteers to instead invite the kids to re-bury the bones. Super, super fun!

If you have ever wanted to plan a dinosaur party, do it! This program had a great mix of families and kids from birth-grade 5 came to play! It was one of our largest programs, and we had so much positive feedback during the event, and afterward on Facebook when parents posted great photos of their kids!

Have fun with dinosaurs!

 

 

Hello library buddies! Right now we are in the midst of summer reading programming and our library has been humming! I try to take a break from regular programs for the last three weeks of May so that I have the flexibility to visit area schools to talk to students during assembles about the summer reading program, accommodate last minute requests from teachers to bring their classes to the library for a STEM program before school ends, and to finish all final SRP preparations. I am the only Youth Services Librarian at my library, and it takes those final three weeks to finish everything up so we are ready to go June 1^st. That means that I am very anxious to see all our library families again, and June seems to fly by!

I just want to share about a program that we offered which I LOVED. In my town, rock painting and hiding is a big deal. Kids paint rocks all summer, and then hide them around town. Other kids and families look and find those rocks, re-hide them, and the cycle keeps going. It is basically a community-wide Easter egg hunt, but with painted rocks and it goes all summer. We even have a Facebook page about our community’s rock hunting! Access it HERE. So, rock painting was the first family program our library offered as part of the summer reading program.

I am offering something new this year with my programming schedule. This summer, I thought that we would offer a family-style program on Monday nights and on Tuesday mornings. That way, if parents/caregivers needed to come in the evening after working hours, they could on Mondays. If they already had commitments Monday night, they had the option of coming Tuesday morning. And, that way I am able to get two large programs done with one prep, one set-up, and one clean-up as we leave the program out and set-up on Monday night so we can do it again on Tuesday morning! Rock painting was the first program were I tried this schedule out, and it worked great. I heard from many parents/caregivers that having the Monday night/Tuesday morning option was working great for their family and made it easy for them to come to the library since they had both days as options!

The skinny on Rock Painting:

Cost: $0 (We had everything on hand. You probably do too!)

Supplies:
Rocks (Ask at a landscaping center to donate some!),
Washable paints in a variety of colors,
Paintbrushes,
Cups for water,
Dollar store plastic tablecloths (Unless you are okay with scrubbing washable paint off tables. We had to do this for some of our tables, and it was not that bad. But, tablecloths would help!)
Clear spray paint,
Baby wipes/paper towels.

Benefits: Low cost, program basically runs itself after set-up, works for all ages (babies-high school students), makes a great family program since it works for all ages, kids have the opportunity to be artistic, and afterwards, they enjoy the physical exercise of walking around the community and hiding their rocks.

This was a very low-stress program. I asked a local landscaping business, and they donated a 5-gallon pail of rocks. Kids painted all the rocks they wanted, and we did not go through all the rocks from that 5-gallon bucket. I also put out our washable paints, and when kids came in, a volunteer asked them what colors of paint they wanted. The volunteer then squirted a small amount of paint on a Styrofoam plate.

(NOTE: Last year when I offered rock painting the kids were allowed to pour the paint themselves. I would strongly recommend having a volunteer to do this for them. The kids poured out way more paint than they needed and we ended up wasting a lot of paint. Also, this is a great opportunity for a volunteer or staff to interact and welcome families to the program/library!)

We set up some tables, covered several of them with $1 tablecloths, and set out cups with paintbrushes and recycled plastic yogurt containers with water so kids could wash out their brushes. We also had some baby wipes and paper towels on hand for kids to wipe their brushes, or clean their fingers from the paints.

Kids from babies to high-schoolers happily painted for the whole hour that the program went on! Once the rocks were dry, we took them outside and sprayed them with clear spray paint to “fix” the washable paint on the rocks, so that the paint would not wash out when the rocks would get rained on.

Low cost, low prep, high interaction, the program basically runs itself, and a great opportunity for kids to be artists and then physically active as they walk around their community looking for places to hide their rocks! We will definately be doing this again!