Make new friends with a Stuffed Animal Sleepover!

My library has offered two stuffed animal sleepovers in the past, and they've both been hits. I think the premise works on multiple levels: it's undeniably cute; it responds to children's treatment of their stuffed animals as real; it raises intrigue about what happens in the library after hours; and it offers a slight variation on the usual story time format. All these interesting aspects combined create a fun and unique opportunity for early literacy programming.

I've shared full details of the logistics of this program in my previous two posts--animals dropped off the night before, me running around the library to stage sleepover pics of the animals, pickup at story time the next morning--so head to those posts if you're looking for point by point explanation of how a stuffed animal sleepover works.

Our pick-up story time went without a hitch, with the kids hugging their stuffed friends and listening like doting parents to what their friends did overnight. In our story time, we:

Sang some songs - We started story time with my traditional opening song, "Open, Shut Them." We also sang the "ABC" song because several children, when they dropped off their stuffed animals the night before, said that the "ABC" song was their animals' favorite. Adding little details like this--asking kids what their animals like, then doing those things--adds a whole other level of excitement and engagement in the event.

Read some stories - I shared two stories with the kiddos that I had "shared" with their stuffed animals the night before. We shared Hugless Douglas and the Big Sleep by David Melling, as that story humorously deals with sleepovers. We also read Mo Willems's That Is Not a Good Idea!, which I said was the stuffed animals' favorite, and we talked about how what we thought was going to happen in the story isn't what really happened.

Viewed the slideshow of sleepover pics - I used the Haiku Deck app to quickly put together a simple slideshow of the sleepover pics I'd taken on my iPad. Haiku Deck allows creators to share their presentations to the web, which made it very simple for me to email the attending caregivers so they could view the slideshow again at home.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Breakfast snack - I passed around glasses of apple juice and some mini donuts. It's a post-sleepover snack, after all.

Craft time - I stapled together three-page books out of white computer paper and set out lots of stickers and crayons on each craft table. I invited the children to create books about their stuffed friends--about what they liked at the sleepover, about their favorite things to do together, etc. The creativity and thoughtful workmanship that went into these books was beautiful, as the children got very into creating accurate stories about their stuffed animals. At least half of the children wanted to read their stories to me before they left the library, and I was happy to hear them.

~~*~~

This go-round of the stuffed animal sleepover saw a 50-50 mix of return attendees and new faces. From my perspective, that's a good indicator of a program to keep in mind for continued occasional repetition.

Halloween Safety at the Library

My library district once again partnered with our local ambulance district to offer a slate of Halloween Safety programs at several of our branches this month. I've talked about this partnership in the past, and if you have the ability to create such a partnership with your local public safety folks, I highly recommend it. Kids especially enjoy getting to see inside an ambulance.

If you don't have the ability to create this sort of partnership, however, that doesn't mean you can't tie some Halloween safety tips into an October program. Compliance and Safety shares some free tips for staying safe on Halloween addressing topics from costume safety, to food and candy safety, to other relevant details for families that may be planning to trick-or-treat. These are great tips to know from a reference perspective, and they can also make helpful asides in a Halloween program.

I know that different libraries include (or don't) Halloween in different ways in their story time programs, from incorporating a single Halloween-themed story and craft into story time, all the way through having kids dress up and trick-or-treat through the library. Regardless of what your library does, consider making these Halloween safety tips available to the families you serve in some capacity. I've found that parents really appreciate the tips, and they also appreciate that the library cares about the safety of their children outside of library time. These small details really help us to build strong relationships with our service populations.

Celebrate Fall with a Fall Festival!

One of the programs I inherited when I started my job here two years ago was the school-age Fall Festival. The program originated with my colleague Angie, who now puts her excellent talents to use with teen services, but it was such a hit we wouldn't have thought to drop it. What's great about programs like an annual Fall Festival is that, even though you offer them every year, you can switch up the activities you do in them. You end up with consistent attendance without driving yourself mad through repetition. Best of both worlds.

This year, our Fall Festival consisted of four activities:

Painting Pumpkins
     I got a bunch of mini pumpkins from a local market and set them out on dessert-size plates to minimize paint spillage. I set out a few autumn-like colors of paint, too: green, yellow, black, and purple, as well as some glow-in-the-dark paint that was a hit. As children got to the program, I encouraged them to get down to painting their pumpkins however they wanted. Now, this is a Fall Festival--not a Halloween program--so I included pumpkins without a directive of jack-o-lanterns or anything else Halloween-related. I found that the kids painted their pumpkins with hugely diverse designs with this minimal instruction; whereas instructions for a jack-o-lantern would have enforced some creative limits, free painting was completely open.

Draw and Tell "The Night Walk"
     I told the story of "The Night Walk" from the script and drawing notes on the Notes from the Story Room blog. The story follows a pair of siblings, professing boredom, who accompany their father on a walk outside at night. In the dark, they encounter plenty of new noises--including the sound of the creature that results from this simple draw and tell tale.

Pumpkin Mummy Relay Race
     The kids split into two even groups and formed lines for our relay race. The race included two parts. First, each team member was to individually grab two small pumpkins, then speed walk around our course while holding them. When the first team member returned with the pumpkins, the next team member speed walked, and so on. Then, once all the walkers were finished, each team had two rolls of toilet paper and instructions to make two of their team members into mummies. The first team to successfully wrap two entire mummies would win, and incentive that inspired some interesting mummy-wrapping techniques. The excitement was pretty fierce for an activity that took a bit of time. You might say the kids got quite wrapped up in all that excitement. :)

Candy Corn Bingo
     Several years ago, my colleague Angie created a set of bingo cards filled with autumn imagery. We break out these cards for the Fall Festival and put out candy corn on the tables as card markers. I call the pieces until every child has won at least once--yesterday we had enough time for everyone to win twice. Each win nets two prizes: a piece of candy and a book. I buy a variety of candy from the dollar store to make our sweets options, and the books consist of ARCs and leftover summer reading prize books. I love seeing that, while kids will choose a piece of candy without giving it any thought, they choose their books carefully. There are always a few kids who ask incredulously if they can really keep the books "for always"; I'm happy to tell them yes.

~~*~~

There you have it: our high-energy, literacy-positive Fall Festival for school-age children. Do you offer fall or Halloween festivals/parties for this age group at your library? What do those programs look like?

Preschool Chemistry Science on the ALSC Blog

Yesterday I posted on the ALSC Blog my plan for a preschool science program on the topic of chemistry. Head over there to get full details on the story, talking points, hands-on activities, and take-homes to help children gain a foundation for understanding some basic principles of chemistry. Don't forget to share you own preschool chemistry activities and ideas in the comments!

Unprogramming with Teens: Anime Club

One of the longest-running, most successful teen programs at my branch also happens to be an excellent example of teen-driven unprogramming: Anime Club.

Once a month, teens interested in anime and/or manga--and there are a TON of them--converge on the library meeting room for two hours of socializing and communally enjoying their shared passion. Within that two-hour space, Anime Club hits all facets of unprogramming with teens:

• Ice Breaker -- Sometimes the program leader (typically my teen person, Angie) leads a game as an icebreaker, but sometimes the teens are already comfortably chatty and so the program opens with fevered discussion of recently-discovered anime series. On occasions when Anime Club includes cosplay, the ice breaker takes the form of a cosplay show and tell.
• Library Tie-in -- The library has lots of manga options in the young adult collections, and often the newest additions to the collection will be featured in Anime Club.
• Stations of Stuff -- The crux of Anime Club is viewing anime, be it in the form of full-length films, episodes from series (both from the library's collection and using free online samples deemed appropriate by a few key club members), and online clips. Often there are other activities, too, including anime coloring activities, making candy sushi, and using elements of the Anime Club Kit sponsored by our Friends of the Library group. This kit includes several manga puzzles from Tokyopop, manga playing cards and card games, and a guide for creating manga.
• Social Time -- As with many teen programs, there isn't designated, separate social time; instead, teens converse throughout the program.
• Food -- Anime Club at our branch necessitates two foods on a semi-regular basis: Poky and Ramen. See also: the candy sushi mentioned in Stations of Stuff.

Anime Club takes place the same time every month, and this regular offering has allowed a core group of between 8-12 teens to attend pretty consistently. After district-wide teen events, like the lock-in, our numbers get a boost from teens who frequent other branches that don't have their own Anime Clubs.

Anime Club has built a great camaraderie among the teen library users who might otherwise not find a niche outside of the manga section. Their enthusiasm for anime, and their suggestions for great films and series to consider for inclusion in the library's collection, really carries the endeavor and ensures that they feel a sense of ownership and belonging in the program. For relatively little staff and program cost, that's a lot of engagement by teens. That's the hallmark of a great unprogram.

I'm On the Shelf at The Children's Book Review

Bianca Schulze at The Children's Book Review recently asked me some questions about librarianship and what goes on at my library for the site's monthly "On the Shelf" column. It was a pleasure to respond to these questions, which got me thinking deeply about what I do in the library and why.

Head over to The Children's Book Review's latest "On the Shelf" column to see my responses, then stick around on the site to explore the plethora of fantastic resources they have to offer librarians, teachers, and children's literature enthusiasts alike.

My Maker Philosophy

Maker spaces have been something of a libraryland topic du jour recently, and youth services most definitely has a role to play in the maker movement. Really, youth services is where it's at--where making has always taken place. Currently, there's the idea that maker spaces necessarily involve often-expensive equipment: 3D printers, woodworking tools, looms, soldering irons, computers with a gamut of fancy design software. These tools are great, no doubt about it, but they do not a maker space make. Think of all those crafts and open-ended building activities libraries have been hosting for children for decades. That's making right down to the core. We were making in the children's room long before maker spaces were cool.

Libraries of every ilk can tap into their own maker potential by thinking about making's roots in youth services. High-tech is great, but it's not a maker space necessity, especially when it comes to making with kids. In my view, there are only a handful of true necessities. Making with kids means:

1. Open-ended Activities -- While I agree that kids need to learn to follow directions and thus product-oriented activities have a benefit, I think open-ended activities are much more conducive to that making mindset. Open-ended making activities for kids can mean creating aliens--you decide what your alien looks like. It can mean choosing from a variety of techniques to create greeting cards for friends, children choosing the methods and materials they want to employ. Open-ended can mean we all have similar goals, but how we accomplish them is up to us. It can also mean a total free-for-all, open creative space in which the sky is the limit.

2. Variety of Supplies -- Making is so much more interesting and creative when you have lots of tools and supplies to choose from. That fact works wonderfully with the realities of youth services, where we always have odds and ends left over from various crafts and activities. Making those aliens? Have a myriad of recyclables and leftovers to use as alien body elements. Offer different types of tape and glue so kids can choose what they think is appropriate for their individual creations. Don't assume everyone will want to use the same materials, and don't stifle by limiting supplies to just what you think you'd need to make the "sample" creation. Variety also allows makers to explore materials and techniques they've never experienced before, creating a truly valuable informal learning experience.

3. Plenty of Time -- It takes time to create. In a library program space, kids need to get situated and get comfortable with the idea of their maker task; only then can they actually start to create something that is meaningful to them. And so time becomes a huge necessity: there needs to be plenty of time for kids to think, to explore and experiment with the materials at hand, to try out different techniques, to see what their neighbors are doing, and to change their minds. Short time limits and strict activity-to-activity schedules lead to unfinished products and creations kids don't care much about; time breeds challenge, creativity, and innovative thinking.

4. Display Space -- Having a designated area in which to display children's maker space creations is wonderful. It advertises the types of maker activities other library customers could enjoy, and it allows the makers to feel pride in both their creations and the library. My library displays kids' LEGO Club creations every month on top of our reserves shelving, which is a high-traffic area. Display space can be at a premium in a library, though, so happily there are alternatives to physically displaying creations in the library. One option is to take pictures of the creations and print out a few for a library bulletin board. Another is to upload those photographs to the library's Facebook page or Flickr account. (Want lots of folks to visit your social media pages? Tell caregivers they can see their kids' creations on your pages, and *BOOM* hits galore.) You can even go all out and offer a gallery-style program in which all the various creations from library programs are on display in the program room.

In my philosophy, if you have most or all of these components in any of your library activities, you're providing the kids you serve with a maker space. You don't have to call it a maker space. Chances are many of your customers don't even know what a maker space is, so the name isn't all that important. What is important is to offer youth the space, materials, and opportunity to engage their brains in hands-on creation. No curriculum, no specific desired final product. Just plain old making fun.

~~*~~

I've shared my maker philosophy in connection with my panel for The Digital Shift: Reinventing Libraries, titled "The Community Joins In: Library Maker Spaces." I'd love for your to share your philosophies on maker spaces with youth in the comments, too.