MillenniaLibrarian: entertainment

Friday, December 7, 2018

No Snow, Snow Day

It's December, which can be a tricky time for those of us working in public service. You don't want to ignore Christmas, but at the same time want to be inclusive of all the other cultural holidays that take place around this time of year. Usually, I solve this problem by sticking with a theme of "winter" instead of focusing on any one holiday. The No Snow, Snow Day program was something we did last December with fantastic participant numbers, so we decided to have it again this year.

This program was structured as drop-in stations, something I've learned our community prefers to an instructional program where you have to stay the whole time. We had three stations: sensory snow, shape penguins, and coffee filter snowflakes.

Sensory Snow
Supplies: baking soda, white shaving cream, large bin.
Mixing equal-ish parts baking soda and shaving cream creates a chemical reaction that makes the substance cold like snow! I did learn that if we do this program again next year, we'll need A LOT more baking soda since it sort of dissolves when hit with the shaving cream. The kids loved playing with the "snow," but I would have liked for the bin to be more full.

The mess afterward... But it vacuums up easily and smells great!

Coffee Filter Snowflakes
Supplies: white coffee filters, safety scissors
Surprisingly, this was the most difficult project for the kids to grasp. I found myself sticking close to the snowflake table in order to explain how to fold and cut the filters so that when you unfold them, you have your own originally designed snowflake. After they got the hang of it, our 4-6-year-olds especially seemed to enjoy this activity.

Being silly with snowflakes

Shape Penguins
Supplies: black and white paper cut into shapes, orange triangles, glue sticks, googly eyes (we used self-adhesive ones and they worked great)
I like this activity because all ages of kids can tailor it to their personal skills. The younger ones can work on matching rectangles with rectangles or circles with circles, while the older ones can combine the shapes to make a more advanced penguin. It's also nice because if you don't have much time to prep, you can let the kids cut out their own shapes. If you have more time to prepare for the program you can do what I did and cut out the shapes ahead of time so participants can focus on matching shapes and creatin

The four examples: rectangle, square, circle, and oval.

Storytime regular with her circle penguin!

Penguin and snowflake

Advanced penguins--they even added a background!

Working hard on shape penguins

If there's one thing I've learned while working with this community, it's that drop-in themed programs like this are always a slam dunk. We had over 80 people at this program, and everyone found something they liked. I love watching caregivers encourage their kids to make things and be creative!

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Bowling for Kids

Every year, our system of four branches borrows lanes, pins, and balls (much lighter than actual balls and pins) from Brunswick Bowling for a fun, high-energy, high-capacity program that the kids in the community loooove.

This event is also our most volunteer-intensive program of the summer. This is because there are four carpet "lanes," and we need one teen on either side of each lane: one to tell the kid when to bowl, and the other to re-set the pins. Besides those 8 we need one to count participants, one to run the (super adorable) baby bowling station, and two back-ups to switch out with the ones on the lane in case they need a water or bathroom break.

I was lucky enough to fill all the volunteer slots this year, and it's a good thing because we had almost 200 participants! I think the pictures speak for themselves, so here are some artsy shots one of our volunteers took during the program with my incredibly antiquated digital camera from the mid-2000's.