Fabulous Fridays: Drawing Program

The Program 

As you know summer reading can be crazy. Knowing this, Alyssa & I planned this program knowing we would need a low prep program that would act as  break for us to refresh. I am so thankful we did it this way. Since we are in charge of doing multiple programs a week, the break was needed!

For this program we called upon one of our coworkers Mr. J. (who also works at a local university as an art teacher) for help.  He graciously agreed to help us with this program.

Upon planning for this program, we did not have much in mind for it. It was just meant to be an open ended program where we wanted to encourage our tweens to meet other tweens with the same interest and maybe exchange some drawing tips.

With Mr. J. as our leader, we were able to turn this program into something much more.  Which just goes to show how awesome that collaboration is!

Instead of just having it as an open ended program, Mr. J., turned into more of a drawing workshop. He opened the program with showing us how to draw simple shapes. He followed up with making the point that everything is made up of shapes. If you can draw a shape, you can draw anything! I think this really inspired a lot of our kids, and it also inspired me as well.

After that, Mr. J. asked for questions. One of our participants wanted to learn how to draw people. Mr. J. spent the rest of the time interacting with the kids to show them the basics on how to draw people & the shapes that make up individuals. 

How It Went 

This program went over very well. At first, we did not have many kids show up for the program. That was a little disappointing, but as the program went on we had more and more kids file in & want to participate. It seemed like the participants that came were passionate about drawing and wanted to learn more. 

What We Learned

I am amazed at how easily a program can be adapted to the library & how the most simple programs can be the most successful. As the library moves to becoming a community center, I need to be aware that not all programs have to be lavish & all out. Sometimes, all you need is regular programming to build success & create a center for tweens to go.

In the future, I think this could potentially be a club that the library could successfully implement.  I think part of its success is due to the tween need to explore their interests and to make friends with similar interests. This allows them to develop an understanding of who they are.

With this success, I would like to repeat a program like this in the future & I think it is a very easy program that anyone could replicate. 

Some of you may not be as blessed as we are to have a great art teacher working at their library, but I think this is a program that one could adjust & be able to direct it with little or no art experience.

I think if you create an environment with drawing supplies and go over the basic shapes, I think the kids would build on it from there & help each other. Another option you could use is to invite older teens who are passionate about art to help with the program.  I think with these adjustments anyone could do this program. :) All you would need is some pencils, paper, and a little imagination.

Until next time,

Pamela

Fabulous Fridays: Mario Kart Program

The Program

The description for our program read: "Do you have what it takes to be the best "Mario Kart" racer? Put your skills to the test for a chance to win the ultimate title! Play games and chat with other Nintendo fans while you wait to compete."

Pamela: The goal of this program was to try and provide a fun program for tween boys. We decided on this program, because Ms. V tried it with the teens last year and found that mostly tweens showed up. This was an indication to me that we were missing something in our programming for this group, So we decided to try it with the tweens, and it turned out to be really successful.

Supplies & Stations

Pamela: From our previous programs, we know that stations are successful with this age group. So we wanted to provide other activities for the participants to do while a group played the Wii. 

Bingo 

Using Pinterest, I was able to find these Bingo cards. 

Mario Bingo Cards

If anyone wanted to watch the contestants play, we invited these watchers a chance to play BINGO. While they watched, they would try and find the characters or items on their card in the game. If they saw something on their card, they could mark it off.  When the watcher got BINGO, they would receive a piece of candy. This made just watching other people play a little more fun.

Coloring Pages

Mario Coloring Pages

We printed off these pages and set up a station just to color. This was popular with both the boys & girls. Many wanted to color one to hang up in their room. It was sweet to watch the kids talk to one another as they colored. I felt like this was a nice station to break the ice & allow the kids to meet each other. 

Candy

Just like teens need food, tweens need candy. It is no surprise that our candy stash was cleaned out by the end of the program, but it was fun to have candy for our BINGO game and to have a way for us to introduce ourselves to the kids as we went around the room. 

Board Games

To provide extra activities, we set out board games that we had in the children's department. This was a nice way for us to have an extra activity with out a lot of prep. The kids seemed to really enjoy it as well. Many tween girls flocked to this station and entertained themselves while they waited to play. I thought it was interesting that they enjoyed this so much. Maybe we need to do a game day in the future? 

How it Went

Alyssa: We just thought our numbers were record breaking for our Nuclear glow party. The Mario Kart Competition shattered them entirely with twenty-seven kids attending! This is undoubtedly a program we will repeat one day.

Pamela: I feel like this would make an excellent after school passive program.  The kids were really more interested in free play. We had a few competitive ones, but the program was really about just playing together & enjoying this fun game. Instead of doing an organized program, I think this would be a better passive program to do whenever we see a lot of tweens in the department. It would make a great organized program if we had another Wii, but I didn't feel like the kids got to play as much as they wanted to. We just had more then what we were expecting show up. 

What We Learned 

Alyssa: More than one gaming system is best for a program like this. Also, with that many participants, you need more than just a few stations for the kids waiting their turn to play.

Pamela: The start of this program was pretty stressful. I was running to this program from another job, and had to quickly get things set up. After working  most of the day already and battling traffic, this was not fun. I was pretty grumpy. (Pam is crazy! If we were all that nice when we were grumpy, it would be a much happier world...)

From my teaching days, I was always taught to have a backup plan. I remember my mentor teacher telling me to ALWAYS  have a backup plan, especially when using technology. I always find her advice to be true. 

Of course I didn't have anything ready &.....the T.V. wouldn't work. In addition, several of the Wii remotes were dead & the games were all in the wrong cases.  

I felt like it was a case of Murphy's Law. Whatever could go wrong would go wrong,  but thankfully it didn't. After we got another T.V., things started to calm down.

It really taught me how unpredictable technology is. Since I own a Wii, I thought it would be an easy set up & took the prep for granted. 

I now know when doing a program such as this one, you really need to carefully check to make sure everything works & everything is in order. With summer reading, this can be hard. I think if we have things ready though, we will be more calm & it will be more of positive experience all around.

 That prep is just essential!

Overall, the kids really made this experience fun for me & made my day.  After everyone competed, I got to play the game with them, and  I really enjoyed it. I also learned how to play the game Sorry! and a card game called Liar. 

 It really continued to drive home the point to me that we need to be involved with the kids when we do the program. Not only do you have a blast, but it makes that experience more fun for the kids. I hope our programs continue to be as successful. 

Are you doing some game programs at your library? How did it go?

-Pamela 
&
Alyssa

Fabulous Fridays: Nuclear Glow Heroes Vs. Villains Program

Fabulous Fridays: Nuclear Glow Heroes Vs. Villains Party

The Program

We wanted a way to kick off summer reading with our tweens. As we were brainstorming, we came up with the idea of a glow party. To fit into summer reading, we thought we would give it a heroes versus villains theme. Our main goal was to create an atmosphere where the kids could have fun and meet new friends. To do this, we decided we needed glow sticks- a lot of glow sticks.

Supplies 

This was a fairly low cost program. The only supplies we had to buy were glow sticks from the Dollar Tree and glow-in-the-dark balloons from Wal-Mart.We spent about $15 on the whole program.

For the music, we simply streamed Radio Disney over the internet. This was perfect for this age group. Most parents would consider the content of the music appropriate, but yet it still has the teen edge the tweens crave.

The Stations

Alyssa and I (Pamela) knew that it would be difficult to get the tweens to dance. To help to curve this problem, we set up some stations for the attendees to do.

The stations were: 

(1). The Nuclear Vat

The first station we directed the kids to was a nuclear vat we built out of multi-purpose foam blocks that have been sitting in our storage closet since the dawn of creation. When the kids "fell" into the vat of nuclear waste, they got to choose whether they wanted to make a mustache and become a villain or make a mask and become a hero. The main goal of this station was for the kids to choose a team. The kids spent a great deal of time at this station deciding what team they wanted to be on, and I (Pamela) spend a great deal of time trying to recruit them to the villain side. (mwhahahaha).  From there, we had several other small stations.

2. The Dance Section

This program was all about ambiance! I (Alyssa) brought my amazing disco ball to add the the colorful, nighttime atmosphere. In addition, we scattered approximately eighty glow sticks on the floor, which created a really neat effect! As the kids came in, we told them they were welcome to take the glow sticks. As you can imagine, the glowing floor was extremely short lived, (but the kids had some awesome bling!)  We also had glow in the dark balloons around the room. The tweens ended up playing with these and discovered that if they held the balloons over the black light, it temporarily charged the balloon and made it glow brighter. Ultimately the balloons were used for a game that involved keeping the balloon up in the air without letting it touching the ground.

3. Black Light Messages

We used a black light that was provided by a coworker and placed a large piece of white paper on the table. We invited the kids to write messages and draw pictures using highlighters. It created a fun glowing effect! The tweens really enjoyed this and as you can see they embraced their hero and villain personas. We found quite a bit of heroes versus villains smack talk on the paper at the end of the program along with other messages. My (Alyssa) favorite said, "Fun Party." I love that the kids had such a good time!

In addition to these, we also had several small stations. We had glow in the dark ring toss (which we purchased at Dollar tree) and  glow in the dark bowling.  For the bowling, we just used recycled water bottles a small light-up bouncy ball. To go with our atmosphere, we place glow sticks into the water bottles to make them glow.


4. Comic

We wanted a way for the heroes and villains to compete in a safe way, so we decided to have each team compete to create a giant comic strip. The winner of the comic competition would win the heroes versus villains battle! I (Pamela) lead my villains into battle. We (the villains) made a comic depicting a giant asteroid landing on earth that made everyone evil. I (Alyssa) fought for Truth! Justice! and the American Way! with an awesomely epic comic strip about a giant pumpkin and rainbow minions that attack a city, but are thwarted by the unstoppable Taco Man! The kids spent a large portion of the time carefully depicting their stories and comics. Ms. V. came into judge the comics for us. In the end, Truth, Justice, and Taco Man triumphed and the heroes won the day!

How it Went

Our numbers were record breaking for this program. We had sixteen kids attend! I think the success was due to the shameless promoting we did. Every time we handed out a summer reading card to a tween, we would give them a flier that listed our summer programs for tweens. This had a huge impact on our numbers and I felt like with these numbers it made the program go more smoothly.

The tweens were very receptive to our activities, the other participants, and to us. I do wish we had included another station. We almost did glow in the dark slime, but ran out of time. If we repeat a program like this, I would definitely add more stations.

I (Pamela) think that the tweens really respond well to a free flowing program with many stations. Knowing that works with our tweens, we want to make sure to repeat this format.


What We Learned

The biggest thing I (Pamela) learned was that you just have to get in there and do the activities with the kids. I am finding that talking to them is great, but it is better when you are more involved with the activities. Once I  started to hang out with the tweens and did the activities with them, they started to open up to me.  I felt like I made a bigger impact in this way. We know now that we cannot direct the activities and just make the rounds talking to them, but really need to be doing it with the kids. I hope to continue this throughout the summer in hopes of getting to know our tweens better. We are hoping it will establish a regular tween crowd and are excited for the rest of our Fabulous Friday Programs! (We just finished our Mario Kart program and will blog about that soon.) Next up: Drawing!


What are some tween programs that you are doing this summer?

Until next time,

Pamela and Alyssa

Cinderella Program

The Inspiration

The minute I heard Disney was creating a live-action Cinderella movie, I began counting down the days until its release. Naturally, I decided it would be absolutely necessary to host a tween Cinderella themed program at the Library to celebrate!

The Program

Sadly, I forgot to take any pictures before or during the program and remembered after I had already begun the process of cleaning up. This was a station-based, primarily passive program. I set up five tables with various stations in our Story Hour Room, which is the department's main programming space.

Stations

• Cinderella and fashion related books to check out
• Clocks made from printables and old CD's 
• (See my Pinterest board for more details)
• Design Your Own Dress
• This was a pretty open ended craft. I put out scissors, glue, different colors of paper, tissue paper, glitter, ribbons, and fashion books with pictures of various kinds of dresses.
• Cinderella M.A.S.H.
• Remember the match making game you played as kids? I created my own Cinderellafied/Disneyfied version that allowed Cinderella to honeymoon in exotic locales such as the Pride Lands and included Olaf as an option for Groom, Bridesmaid, and Pet. (Hey, we still all love Frozen and the kids thought it was funny.)
• Which Disney Princess Are You?
• Multiple choice quiz
• Drawing 

Success 

Sometimes you have to count the success of a program in lessons learned rather than in patron attendance. This was one such program. For most of the program I only had two kids: one tween and one very young elementary schooler. However, both of these patrons seemed to enjoy themselves. Reflecting on the experience now, I believe I targeted the wrong age group. Since I assumed the new Cinderella movie would be reminiscent of Maleficent, I felt the tween age range would be appropriate. Based on my attendees, I now think it would be more appropriate as K-5 or all ages program.

What about you? What did you think of the movie? Have you tried Disney or fairy tale programming for tweens? We would love to hear from you!

~Alyssa