Category: programs

Presenting: The NBJH Book Award!

The front page of our NBJH Book Award brochure
The front page of our 2016-2017 NBJH Book Award brochure, featuring six of the 16 titles

I’m not going to lie: this was one of my proudest accomplishments at this job.

The Why

It started out with a list of sort of mediocre selections for our state book award, the Caudills. I love our state awards, but the Caudill has a tough job – it’s for students in grades 4-8. Yikes! There are not a whole lot of books that are appealing for 9-year-olds and 14-year-olds. So they’d recommend some books for the younger kids, some books for the older kids, but what about my completionists – the kids who were desperate to read every. single. book, even if they hated ’em?

This project started for those kids, but it grew to include just about everybody else. What I love so much about running an in-house book award program is the sense of ownership our students feel. The whole program is run by them, with some oversight from staff members. They pick the books, they promote the books, they celebrate at the end of the program. It provides great leadership opportunities for our committee members, and students who aren’t on the committee are more invested because the list was chosen by their peers. Plus, that list is perfectly tailored to our school, which is huge.

Continue reading “Presenting: The NBJH Book Award!”

looking back on stuffed animal storytime

One of my favorite-ever public library programs is Stuffed Animal Storytime. The last time I did this was back in June 2012 – my last year (so far) of public librarianship – and it was a huge hit. Kids ages 2-6 brought their favorite stuffed friend to a late-afternoon storytime. We had snacks and made blankies for the stuffed animals (using cheap fabric, pre-cut into appropriate sizes, that kids decorated with fabric markers). Then the kids said goodbye to their creatures, and the adventures began! Continue reading “looking back on stuffed animal storytime”

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month happens every November, and it’s one of my favorite times of year. This year, for the first time, we opened up our NaNoWriMo club to 7th graders as well as 8th graders – our 7th graders used to do NaNoWriMo in their language arts classes, but due to curriculum changes that’s no longer happening. We still wanted to give them a chance! Continue reading “NaNoWriMo”

Program: Spies and Codes

Let’s be honest, here: the tweens are always my favorites. Here at my new job, I’m lucky enough to get to work with them again! Unlike my last library, here they do programs in six-week sessions. This has been an interesting new challenge for me. I’m used to planning a handful of one-off programs each month for a variety of ages. Now I have to plan six weeks of thematically consistent programs, called “Club 36” – in other words, an after-school cub for grades 3-6. Continue reading “Program: Spies and Codes”

Program: Winter Craft

This program was for kids in K-3rd, which was a little young for the craft I had planned – they suggest that it’s an “easy” craft for kids ages 6 and up, but that’s a stretch. I had some games and a story ready, but the craft took us 45 minutes, and my teen volunteers and I were kept busy assisting with the craft.

Here are the instructions for the paper cup reindeer. We had all of these supplies lurking around in our basement, so I figured it’d be an easy one to prep. Not so much. It turns out that tempera paint doesn’t play nice with styrofoam cups. I painted one to use as a sample, and as soon as it dried, the paint started flaking off in chunks. AWESOME. With no other paint available to me, and not enough time (or material) to just cover the cups in brown felt, I decided the kids would color their cups brown…with markers. Classy. (They didn’t look as bad as all that, really. The kids were very happy to show them off to their parents and siblings, which is always a good sign.)

We also had to use glue dots for the eyes and – wait for it! – the jingle bell. You may not see a jingle bell on the original craft – we had a ton left over from Christmas last year, so we made our reindeer EXTRA FESTIVE by adding a felt collar and jingle bell to the bottom of the cup. There is nothing I love more than sending kids home with a noisy toy…

Especially when the kids are also on a sugar high! After we finished our reindeer, we waited for the glue to dry by eating snowmen. We stacked some jumbo and regular-sized marshmallows using pretzel sticks, then attached mini-M&M eyes and buttons using frosting. The kids ate their crafts (and mine – I don’t eat marshmallows), and then asked for more frosting and M&Ms. Since they were about to go home with their parents, I figured they could have as much sugar as they wanted.

And they did. The end.

Tween Book Club: The Lemonade War

They hated this book. Seriously: not one of them liked it. Apparently it was “the most boring book EVER.” A couple of them stopped halfway through (and they only got that far because they thought I would make the snacks contingent on their passing a quiz – something I’ve done before, because I’m evil). The rest finished it out of sheer determination, but apparently hated it the entire time. Oops. I thought it was cute. (Whatever – they voted for it, so they can’t complain too much.) With that said, the situations in this book yielded a lot of interesting discussion – everyone has opinions about siblings and money – so it was worthwhile anyway.

And for the record, they did like the math contest.

The Lemonade War, by Jacqueline Davies

1. Why was Evan so upset about having Jessie in his class? How would you feel if your younger sister or brother skipped up to your grade?

2. Did either of them go too far in their attempts to win the contest?

3. What do you think about Megan? Is she a nice girl? Do you think she and Jessie will stay friends during the school year?

4. At the beginning of the book, Evan is good at making friends and talking to people, but not so good at school. Jessie is great at math and other school work, but doesn’t have many friends and has a tough time understanding people’s feelings. Do either of them change during the book? How?

5. Evan and Jessie try very hard to hide their fights from their mother. Why do they do this? Do you think it’s a good or bad thing that they keep their arguments private?

6. Evan puts his money into an iPod fund; Jessie decides to donate hers to charity. If you made $100 through your own hard work, what would you spend it on?

Activities

1. Comment cards! When Megan and Jessie become friends, Megan writes her a “comment card” that talks about what she likes about her new friend. Write some nice things about your assigned person on a comment card. Then we are going to SHARE THEM.

2. MATH PROBLEMS! This is a book all about math, soooo…we’re going to have a math contest. And you’re going to like it. 😀

Helpful stuff: There are a lot of teacher’s guides with discussion questions and activities at the book’s website, Houghton-Mifflin’s website, and some other random places.

Program: Once Upon a Time

If you love books about dragons and witches, daring adventures, and knights and princesses, this is the program for you. We’ll play games, make a craft, and talk all about our favorite fantasy books.

Grades: K-5

Budget: $20

Attendance: 18 (with four volunteers)

Games

For this program, we split the kids into two teams (red and blue) as they entered the room. All of the games were played in teams.

Balloon Joust: I hung four red and four blue balloons in two rows from the ceiling (about 10 feet apart). One kid from each team was blindfolded and given a foam sword. With their teammates giving them directions, the two jousters raced to hit all of their team’s balloons. Loud, but fun.

Fantasy Match: Each team was given 20 cards: 10 heroes and 10 villains from well-known fairy tales. The first team to match the villains to the correct heroes won.

Craft

Sock puppet dragon, from Activity Village: I bought a bunch of kids’ socks at the dollar store – I needed 20 socks, so I bought 12 pairs just to be safe. Total cost? $3, and the socks came in a variety of bright colors and patterns. We cut out wings and flames from card stock – I love fun foam, too, but it’s pricey and doesn’t glue down as easily as card stock. We did this craft as an assembly line – I had enough teen volunteers to staff each station, so the kids didn’t have to wait too long. Older participants pretty much did the craft on their own.

Magic wand: We did use the fun foam for this one.  To start, each kid wrapped some metallic ribbon around a small wooden dowel, with both ends held down by double-sided tape. We cut out one star per kid (if you have a star die-cut, USE IT) and let them decorate the star, then glued it to the top of the dowel. If you cut out two stars per kid, you can put them back-to-back and the wands will look nicer, but again, it was a cost issue. (They loved them anyway. Who doesn’t love a magic wand?)

Storytime: Happy Halloween!

Oh, so did I mention that today I did three storytimes AND an hour-long program for grade-school kids? No? That’s probably because I didn’t know I was doing those things, either. But it’s all good.

Today and tomorrow, my supervisor and I are going over to the park district’s preschool to read some Halloween stories. Good thing there are, like, twenty million awesome books about Halloween.

My first storytime this morning was not great. I hadn’t done a storytime in a year and a half, and I’d forgotten some of the most important rules of storytime:

1. Don’t let anyone touch the puppets unless you’re prepared to have everyone touch the puppets. As soon as one kid touches the puppet, it’s all over. I like letting everyone come up at the end to touch/hug/get a kiss from the puppet, but having it happen in the middle of storytime is super disruptive. Also, keep the puppets in your bag when you’re not using them, or risk being treated to a rousing chorus of, “BUT I WANT TO MEET THE PUPPET NOW!”

2. Don’t ask open-ended questions during a story (it’s fine at the beginning when you’re chatting with the kids). Questions with one-word answers are usually okay, although even that can have dire consequences. (Try “Does anyone have pets?” Seriously, I dare you. Try it.)

3. Have a very clear introduction and conclusion. Introduce yourself, tell the kids about the library (Have you been to the library? Do you know what we have at the library?), and sing some kind of hello song. At the end, sing a goodbye song (I like to use the “hello” song with some words changed out), give puppet kisses, and then get out.

…well, anyway, after that first storytime (in which I failed to follow any of those rules), I got back on my game. The afternoon went a lot better. What did we read?

Continue reading “Storytime: Happy Halloween!”

Tween Book Club: Gregor the Overlander/A Crooked Kind of Perfect

This meeting was a little tricky, because these two books have pretty much nothing in common. Why did we read them both, you ask? Oh, the trials and tribulations of having kids with wildly divergent reading tastes!

A few times a year, I booktalk a few options to the kids and have them vote on what they’d like to read. There are usually some choices that are universally popular – we always want to read the latest Wimpy Kid book – and a few total flops. In our last voting session, something new happened: we had two books that were EXTREMELY popular with half the kids, and EXTREMELY unpopular with the other half. (Example: I have them write in their rankings from 1 (most want to read) to 8 (least want to read) and I had one girl write “800 TRILLION” underneath Gregor. Ouch.) Usually we get a combination of popular and neutral, or totally neutral, or totally unpopular, all of which are easier to deal with. This time, though, I had two groups of kids who would be seriously disappointed if I didn’t choose their favorite option.

So I chose both.

At the time, this seemed like a great idea. Everyone wins!

…not so much.

I hadn’t considered the logistics of actually running a meeting where the kids were discussing totally different books. At first I thought about breaking the kids into two groups and appointing one kid from each group as a discussion leader, but I’m not that optimistic. Discussions derail quickly enough when I’m the one moderating. Then I considered making each group write a booktalk to convince the other group to read their book. This worried me a little: since I never know who’s going to show up to a given meeting, I couldn’t be sure that each group would have kids who are comfortable writing and presenting. So what’s a tween librarian to do?

A trivia contest, of course! I love trivia contests for a lot of reasons:

1. They allow kids to participate as much or as little as they want to (provided you’re playing in groups, which I always do).

2. Success requires the kids to have actually read the book.

3. Everyone loves a little healthy competition! (Well, almost everyone. More on that later.)

When the tweens arrived, they split into teams. Because (miraculously) all of the kids had finished their books, I did end up having both teams summarize their books. It went better than expected, though I’m not sure anyone was convinced to read the other book. We then went on to the trivia contest, which the Gregor team won overwhelmingly. (Really overwhelmingly.)

The best part of the meeting, though, was something I’ve never tried before. We’ve gotten tons of new middle-grade books in the last few weeks, and they haven’t been getting as much attention as I’d like – our “new book” shelf is sort of hidden in the back of the room. I brought a bunch of the new books upstairs, then had each kid pick a book. They had five minutes to read the summary of the book and skim its contents (looking for illustrations, size of type, length of chapters, etc.), after which they each presented their book to the group. They actually seemed to enjoy doing it, and all of the books except one were checked out by a book club member, so I’m counting that as a success.