Hello library friends,

It has been several months since my last blog post. I have missed interacting with you, my colleagues and friends, on this space during my hiatus. I am happy to now be back! I missed blogging not only because it offered a professional way for me to connect with and build friendships in the library world, but because it provided me a tool to reflect on my work. After a program or new initiative, I would sit down and ask, “Did this program accomplish my goals? The goals of my audience? What went well? Do we want to offer this program again? What can I do differently next time to make it work better for different ages?” Blogging gives me a reason to reflect.

I have been reflecting a lot lately on the differences between public and school librarian’s work. This is due to the fact that during my blogging break, I went through a job change from Brewer Public Library to Ithaca School District school library. I went from serving a service population of 15,000 to now serving a community of 450 4K-12^th grade students, all in one building. While I deeply miss the staff, families and children that I developed wonderful friendships with while at the public library, I am also so thankful for this change and the work I am doing now in schools.

I wanted to use this space to communicate some lessons that I wish I had known when I was in the public library world about the work that school librarians are doing.

First of all, even though it now seems obvious, I did not realize at first that school librarians are teachers. At the public library, on certain days I might organize and run as many as four programs a day, but mostly I only ran one or two. In the school library, I have six to eight classes coming into the school library every day. I do have freedom to organized how I teach the Library curriculum, but the time is limited.  My classes run every day, and I have only 40 minutes with each class each week to reinforce concepts of reading that are also being taught by other teachers in their classrooms. That means that my lesson plans need to be very focused with specific learning goals in mind. It also means, that my lessons plans build on each other for a long term.  Unlike the public library programs that are usually presented as completed block of learning to students who may (or may not) return, the school librarian teaches the same students for an entire academic school year.

I always wondered where the “shushing librarian” stereotype came from, but now I know. It is the school librarians who were the first, and sometimes, the only librarian in the lives of students who become parents. At the public library I was blessed to have a director who let my youth programs be as loud as needed. In the school, that is simply not an option. My school is so small that there are not enough classrooms to fit everyone, so one study hall per period is in the library. I will teach a class of 4K-6^th graders in one half of the library while a study hall is held in the other half of the library room. I can not let my students be loud because only a few feet away are middle or high schoolers trying to get their homework done. This means that I need to do something I never asked students to do at the public library: I ask them to speak quietly and I have to “shush” them when they do get to loud. I also need to speak quietly myself when I am reading a picture book aloud now. It is really hard. Learning and reading should be exciting, and when we are excited, we naturally talk louder. It is hard to put a damper over that fire.

Another consideration is that school librarians are not able to leave the building in the same way that public librarians can. I know that this can differ from one public library to another, but it is a consideration that school librarians are expected to be in the building with their time accounted for each minute. Leaving the building is often just not an option. For collaboration between the public and school librarian to happen, often, it will work best if the public library can reach out and meet with the school librarian through video or phone meetings, or going to the school, if possible.

School librarians see the practical problems of literacy needs within a wide variety of students they serve. For most of the children I serve in the school, the school library is their only library. Many of my students do not have many books in their homes. Many of my students have never been to the public library.  I do my best to have great books available, including books that are required in classes, but it can be challenging when multiple students want or need the same copy of a book. It can take weeks for the new books I order to arrive since I also order processing. For the student waiting, those few weeks can be the difference between encouraging reading and losing momentum.

I realize that many of my students may never visit their public library or a physical bookstore, for a variety of reasons. For these children, the school library is their only access to books. Can this be changed? Can visits to the public library become as normal as stops to the grocery store or the laundry mat? I know that they can. I see great work happening in public libraries to address inequities, including eliminating fines and doing outreach library programming in the community. I also know that public and school librarians have great insights because they see challenges from different perspectives. Let’s use that knowledge we both have in our libraries to creatively imagine solutions to barriers.

I want to take a moment to applaud my public library colleagues who have advocated diligently to begin making a cultural shift in libraries away from collecting fines. Unintentionally, I think that in public libraries our actions communicated that we valued fine money more than relationships with our patrons. I know this was never true, and yet, I often have parents talk to me that they did not use the public library in the past because they felt unwelcomed, or shamed, because of past fines. Thank you to everyone who is working to communicate the message that one of the libraries’ first priorities is to put books in the hands of kids.

Another success story that I hear is public and school libraries working together so that families can return their books at either location, and the books will eventually make it back to their home. This is a powerful partnership that communicates to families that libraries are working together to make accessing reading material, and retuning books, easy.

In the public library world, I worked hard every day to find ways to promote our library services and resources in ways that reached more people and were more effective. In the school library, I do not need to worry about outreach in quite the same way because the children are coming to me on a daily basis.  At the same time, I work just as hard to make sure the library remains a magic place in their imagination.

The outreach programs at public libraries serve the same function of creating that sense of magic for children who attend them.  But these “magical moments” only work when the children and parents come. We know what the challenges are. Thank you to everyone who is working to turn deficit thinking around, and see challenges as possibilities for positive change and growth. Neither the school nor public librarians can meet the reading needs of our community’s students alone. Students need literacy warriors willing to imagine ways to team up together to address challenges.

When I was in the public library, I wish I had know how meeting with the school librarian could go a long way toward finding ways for us each to do what we do best, but differently. And, I believe now, more than ever, that public and school librarians have power to effect great change in the reading habits of the children they serve, especially when we can partner together. We are going up against decades-old challenges and barriers to literacy access.  For the families and children we serve, we are literacy warriors.

Keep reading, my friends!

Emily 🙂

Libraries are not just about accessing books, DVDs, and magazines. They are spaces where positive interactions between children, their family/friends, and library staff take place and memories can be created. They are also places where ideas are presented. Kids can come, interact with those ideas, and then take those ideas home with them to be further read about, experimented with, and used in their play.  For that reason, I totally felt that setting up a mini golf course in the library was something we needed to do this summer! It was very inexpensive and completely fun!

I also feel that one of our missions as librarians serving youth is to demonstrate for kids and parents how to play using simple materials that they already have. That way, the families can use our ideas to re-create similar experiences and keep the learning going once they get home. This really hit home for me when three parents came up to me while their children were playing mini golf and told me that this is something they would be doing again at home. Yeah!

And, I also feel that the library’s mission is to connect our community to resources that they may otherwise not be able to participate in. For us, the closest option to go to a mini-golf course would be to travel about an hour away, and I wanted to bring this experience to families in our community who otherwise are not able to drive that distance.  It was a total hit!

Here is a video of me walking through our course:

Inspiration: The Sault Ste. Marie Public Library and Maura in the Library were both very helpful in sharing photos of the Mini Golf courses that their library planned. Check them out!

Cost: About $20 to purchase the mini golf clubs that the Dollar Tree was selling this summer and 9 green plastic cups that we used for the “holes”.

Set-up: Our golf course had 9 holes, and each hole was themed using odds and ends from our craft and programming rooms. Kids started playing each hole by placing their golf ball on the green dot labeled “Start Here” and working their way around obstacles to get their ball into the green cup.

9 Hole Mini Golf:
Hole #1: Dr. Seuss
Hole #2: Dinosaurs
Hole #3: Clifford the Big Red Dog
Hole #4: Legos
Hole #5: Chefs/cooking
Hole #6: Star Wars
Hole #7: Travel to all 50 States
Hole #8: Alphabet
Hole #9: Laura Ingalls Wilder/Frontier.

I started off by marking the boundaries of each hole with masking tape, but I soon realized that with kids, their balls would often roll outside of the tape, and we would have golf balls all over the place. So, I found books that matched the theme for each hole and set the books up around the perimeter to form a kind of barrier. It worked great, we just had to re-shelve all the books once the program was done. And, this was a great way to “display” lots of our books!

Another idea to establish a perimeter around your holes is to tape pool noodles down to the floor.

I also had my go-to upbeat song, Shake Your Body Down by Laurie Berkner playing on repeat while the program was running.

Staff: You could probably get away with only one volunteer/staff member being the groundskeeper at this kind of event, but I had several teen volunteers. So, one volunteer took care of the welcome table, where kids came to get their golf club, golf ball, and a scorecard if they wanted one. We found par for the scorecard by just taking my score, but you could also have several volunteers play the course and average their scores for each hole. Here is a Word document download link for the Mini Golf Scorecard and Clubhouse Rules that we had displayed at our welcome table: Mini Golf Scorecard. A second volunteer was in the programming room, and they simply walked around and fixed books or props if they were knocked down by golf balls or golf clubs that got a little too wild.

And there you have it! Mini Golf in the library!

Candyland! The game of nostalgia and childhood! As much fun as it is to play it as a board game with small game pieces, for the past two years, we gave our community an opportunity to experience this game on a whole new level by building sets out of cardboard to make the board game life-size!

How it happened: Last summer I had over 20 teens hanging out at the library and they asked if there were projects they could help me with. I was not planning on having this many great helpers, and I scrambled every week to find helpful things they could do that they were also interested in. Until, one of them asked if they they could build the sets to Candyland, thinking of how much fun it would be to play the game if it was life-size. Boom! The large project I needed! Teens worked for about 6 weeks to build all the sets, and many of the sets were worked on by several teens coming into the library separately, so there was lots of collaboration. We used lots of cardboard, construction paper, and paint!

We set the game up in our programming room by using just plain construction paper to create the “path” that the kids walked on. Teens also created four dice using square boxes that kids rolled to let them know what colored square to move to. This summer, I had four teens on hand to help run the game, so I gave a dice to each of our four teen volunteers and they would bring a family, or group, of kids through the game. The kids would throw the dice, and the volunteer would retrieve it, and then pass it to the next player. That way the kids never had to leave their square. Also, having four volunteers meant that we could have four groups playing the game at one time. We could accommodate a large crowd this way and no kids had very long to wait as a volunteer would finish their game every few minutes, and then go back to the starting square to pick up their next group of kids who wanted to play.

Music is such a powerful force to set a welcoming tone, and I had Laurie Berkner’s “Shake Your Body Down” song on repeat while families played their way through Candyland. Another song that would also be great is the Lollipop Song.

Here are our sets:

Plum Tree

Mr. Mint 

Gumdrop Pass (made from a tablecloth and sand pails)

Grandma Nut’s House

Princess Lolly

Queen Frostine 

Gloppy 

King Candy’s Castle 

And, that’s Candyland! We saved the sets and the paper squares that kids used as the “path” so this is a FREE program once you have it set-up and you can run it as many times as your community needs! In 2018, we offered this twice during our summer reading program, once on a Monday night and again on a Tuesday morning, taking advantage of the opportunity to only have one set-up and one take-down for two huge programs!

Have you create life-size games at your library? I would love to hear about it!

Jedi Knights have assembled children sensitive to the force to test their Jedi abilities. Under the tutelage of the Jedi masters, the recruits must learn how to use the force to wield lightsabers, discover their Star Wars name, design their own ship, shoot down Storm Troopers, assist in a mission to destroy the Death Star and build their own droid. Come and join us, my young Padawan!

We offered “Star Wars Jedi Training” the third week of our summer reading program and it was a big hit! We offered this on Monday evening and again on Tuesday morning! One prep and set-up for two huge program days! And, only one clean up on Tuesday after the program was done!  Horray! The costs were incredibly low and families wanted to stay at the library playing with all the activity stations for about 90 minutes, significantly longer than many parents/kids usually have the patience for with a room filled with excited people! That alone was a great sign!

The skinny:
We offered our “Jedi Training” as a program with eight activity stations:

• Discover your Star Wars Name (Credit: Jbrary)
• Find the hidden objects in the Scavenger Hunt (Credit: Jbrary)
• Demonstrate your design skills at the coloring station (Credit: EncouragingMomsAtHome)
• Attempt to sink the Death Star (Credit: The Lego Librarian)
• Design your own Star Wars Ship from LEGOS (Credit: Jbrary)
• Defend against Storm Troopers (Credit: The Lego Librarian)
• Build your own Droid (Credit: The Lego Librarian)
• Lightsaber Training with balloons (Credit: Jbrary)

Because I really, really, really wanted the kids to be able to take a lightsaber with them when they went home, we also had a final station where the Jedi Master would make a lightsaber for each of the kids once they had completed all the activity stations. The lightsaber was a balloon, like the kind you use to make balloon animals. Perfect for my budget! And, all the kids LOVED them!

I also had our Star Wars books set out in a display, and Star Wars music was playing during the program, definately helping to set the Star Wars mood!

Cost: 

• About $10 for 250 balloons to make lightsabers, which we did not go through.
• $8 for a balloon pump on Amazon
• $4 for 4 pool noodles which we turned into pool noodle lightsabers!
• $2 for regular balloons which we used in the lightsaber training with balloons station.

And, here is my breakdown for the activity stations:

Welcome Table and Scavenger Hunt: 

We set up a table near the door so we could greet families as they came in. I made up a Training Card with all the activity stations listed and told the kids that to become a Jedi Knight, they needed to complete all the activity stations on their card. A volunteer at each station (or a volunteer who was “hovering” and covering several activity stations) checked off their boxes once the kids were done with the station. Here is a like to my Star Wars Training Card. I also had the paper for the scavenger hunt at this table as well, and I trained in three volunteers to be able to help the kids find the objects in the children’s library. This scavenger hunt was done by Jbrary! Thank you! Kids were able to find different areas of the children’s library by looking for the star wars characters on their Scavenger Hunt, a win-win for everyone! You can access Jbrary’s Scavenger Hunt file and post HERE. If you have a volunteer who can help lead kids around your library looking for the characters, that would be best, as some kids found this challenging. I also laminated the Scavenger Hunt pages. The kids wrote on them with crayons, and a tissue wiped the crayon marking right off! Doing this meant that I only needed to print out the Scavenger Hunt on 10 pieces of paper, instead of 80!

Discover Your Star Wars Name: 

Thank you, again, Jbrary! Okay! To find your Star Wars first name you combine the first three letters of your last name with the first two letters of your first name. For me, Emily Zorea, my Star Wars name is Zorem! I gave kids reusable nametag holders which they filled out and wore throughout the program! It was a great way to begin conversations with kids! Before kids received their Jedi lightsaber at the end of the program, the Jedi volunteer asked kids to give him their nametag so we could recycle it. Some kids wanted to keep their name, so they took out the piece of paper, but I think we were able to collect all the nametags again! I had a volunteer at this station, but you could get by without one.

Demonstrate your design skills at the Coloring Station: 

I found amazing coloring sheets created by Amy at EncouragingMomsAtHome. Thank you! I printed them off, and kids loved them, often coloring more than one! I usually set out coloring as an option for many of my family programs, and it can get a lack-luster response. These pages, though, were so cool that kids stayed at this station as long as any of the others! No volunteer at this station.

Attempt to Sink The Death Star

The Lego Librarian had this great idea! We cut cardboard into a large circle, and two of my middle school volunteers helped me paint it into something that looks like the Death Star! We folded a dozen paper airplanes and kids tried to fly their paper airplanes through a hold I cut towards the top-right part of the Death Star to “sink” it. Lots of fun, and harder than it looked! We had a volunteer at this station, but it basically runs itself.

Design your own Star Wars Ship

I set out our LEGOS, and kids had a blast! Seriously, I always underestimate how excited kids will be to build with Legos, and they had some great designs! I had a volunteer here, but again, this station really does not need one!

Defend Against Storm Troopers: 

Thank you again, The Lego Librarian! I found some images of Storm Troopers online and printed them out so we had two images to a page. I then asked our volunteers to paint toilet paper rolls white and then cut out the Storm Troopers. Then, they glued the stormtroopers to the toilet paper rolls so they would stand up. My son brought his Nerf guns and was the volunteer at this station where kids defended themselves with Nerf guns against the Storm Troopers. You definitely need a volunteer at this station to keep the kids controlled, load the Nerf guns as needed (most kids did not know how) and to teach good shooting range protocol. No one was allowed to shoot if someone was between the Nerf gun and the Storm Trooper. Also, kids lined up in a row and they all fired at once and then walked over to the Storm Troopers to retrieve their Nerf bullet. It kept this station going, but also taught important safety. Kids were told that aiming the Nerf guns at another Jedi-In-Training (or family member) was never allowed, and all of the kids followed this rule. Great fun, even with the necessary rules and safety! You will have kids asking if they can do this again and again!

Build Your Own Droid

Thank you again, The Lego Librarian! I used his templates for the droids, and just set out cup-up scraps of paper and glue sticks Kids designed their own droid! We had a volunteer here, but you could get by without one as long as someone comes over every once in a while to clean up the station.

Light Saber Training with Balloons!

I cut a pool noodle in half, and then taped the ends with duct and electrical tape to create a lightsaber. You can also use sharpie markers to create lots of detail. I marked off a space in our programming room with tape on the floor and assigned two volunteers to lead this station. I found out that this worked best for us when I only had four pool-noodle lightsabers at the station at one time (basically, four kids at a time). I also put four balloons in this station and the goal was for the kids to either balance their balloon on their lightsaber, or bat their balloon up and down for as long as they could before their balloon hit the floor, or to pass their balloon to a partner. It went well, and parents told me they were going to make a trip to the Dollar Store on the way home to pick up pool noodles to make their own at home!

Finally…you are a Jedi. Come and receive your Lightsaber! 

I do not have great photos of this, unfortunately. But, here is how this worked. Once kids had completed all the stations my son would blow up a “balloon animal” balloon and twist it into a sword for these “Jedi-Knights No-Longer-In-Training”. The kids loved it.  We had a few ballons pop on their way to the car, but my son kept twisting and made replacements as needed. It also gave the kids something to take home along with their new droid and in addition to those Star Wars books they checked out!

Have you done a Star Wars program recently? I would love, love, love to hear your ideas! Please leave a comment below! May the Force be with you, my librarian friends!

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!

Valentine’s Day. For some, just the mention of it brings smiles, for others groans. For myself, I have always appreciated the day as a time to remember family and friends who I care about. And, for the elementary school children who still make Valentine’s day bags and boxes and exchange valentines, it seems that the day is a positive one for them as well. What to do when a library STEM program falls on this special holiday? Plan a Valentine’s Day STEM Party, of course!

The skinny: This was a fun program because I gave myself a constraint: I wanted to create multiple activity stations that all used Valentine’s Day conversation candy hearts. In the end, I was able to design five different activity stations, and after each program, I polled the kids to find out which stations were their favorite. Each station received approximately the same number of votes after running the program five times for five different classes. So, you can be sure that there will be activities here that your kids will enjoy. What I also liked about these activity stations was that they were easy enough for three-year-olds to do successfully on their own, but fun enough for fifth graders to also spend an hour with. This made a great multi-age program, making it perfect for families.

Cost: $30 for all the supplies. I ran this program five times, with brought the cost to about $0.40 per child. But, there were lots of supplies that we did not go through, so it gave me lots of extras for next time. Once I had the stations set up I just kept the supplies on a table in my storage room and brought out the activities for each class as they came to the library for the program, so we were able to use all the supplies over and over. The only casualty was the hearts that we used in the boat building station. Those dissolve in the water after an hour, so be prepared to throw those away (and have a sink nearby for kids to wash their hands!)

Preparation: I set up five tables, each with a different station. I also went online and added some photos of examples of the station to a PowerPoint slide which I printed out and placed at each table as a table-topper so that the kids could see at a glance what the challenge was at each table. I wrote out a few instructions, and voila! Done! Here is a PDF of all the table toppers I had out. All the photos are my own.

Valentine’s Day STEM- Candy Hearts Table Toppers

Resources: I utilized two blogs for the activity stations. Please check out STEM Activities for Kids and Joy in the Works blogs!

How it went: We had five stations for this program:

Candy Heart Wall

Supplies needed:  Candy hearts, straws.

Heart Bridge

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, index cards, plastic cups.

Candy Heart Chute

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, plastic cups, toilet paper rolls, old cardboard, boxes, clothespins…basically any supplies you have in your craft room. Just set it out and watch kids figure out creative solutions with it!

Candy Heart Boat

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, tin foil, containers for water.

Candy Heart Catapult

Supplies needed: Candy hearts, tongue depressors, spoons, rubber bands.

This was a very fun program! It reminded me of my Valentine’s Day party when I was in Kindergarten! We had been doing lots of very specific STEM programs over the past few months, and having multiple activity stations that kids were free to choose and spend as much time as they liked with was a welcome change, for the kids and me. We began with some circle time (all the kids and myself sit in a circle) and we had a great conversation as our program opener about Valentine’s Day, how the kids decorated their boxes, who they care about, etc. Then, I walked around the room and introduced each station by telling kids what the challenge was and what supplies they had to work with. I told them they were free to go where they wanted to but to try to get to all five stations before the hour was up. After that, it was time to ask them to use walking feet to choose the station they wanted to try first! I also did this with a class that needed more structure, and we timed it so that groups of four students were at each station for ten minutes (which seemed like a great amount of time for them).

This program was very relaxed, and parents/grandparents/teachers were able to walk around and participate as much as the kids. Even the stations that I had worries about turned out to be incredibly popular, such as the Build a Candy Heart Wall. I watched the kids work on their walls for 10-15 minutes, in kind of relaxed zen-like state. It was wonderful. After an hour I invited the kids to come back into a circle and asked anyone who had something to share to raise their hand. We went through multiple comments, and then I took a poll to find out which station was the most popular.

And, that is a wrap! I hope everyone is having a wonderful February. Spring is on the way!

In the frigid cold of January, on a magical Saturday, our library was transformed into a warm castle of medieval times for a community Renaissance Faire. And, a merry time was had by the volunteers and families who enjoyed costumes, food, crafts, and activities belonging to a time long gone by. This is the first kind of “living-history” program I have hosted, and I think it is one of my top five favorite library programs we have ever offered. So, if you are looking for something totally different to liven up your programming, and something totally budget-friendly, read on!

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