Thursday's Topic: Today's Summer Reading Craft

 

    This is the first week of programming for Summer Reading. Summer Reading is nice because you have a lot of interested kids in the programs but honestly it is very exhausting. Today I had one program, arts and crafts. How do you guys handle your waiting list? We call them in advance and see if anyone cancels and then call people on the waiting list. But how do you deal with the parents who don't respond to your phone calls or say they are coming with the kids but don't show up? That's the tricky part. I'm thinking of giving them one more week and then letting them know if they are not there the following week, we may have to give their spot away. I hate to do that, but with the demand for the programs, I hate to see someone miss out who wants to come.

  Now on to the fun stuff, the program we had today was great and we had 23 kids. If we continue having attendance like this, I may stagger the program so we have it about an hour an a half and have kids do their craft and leave and then have some others come in. This week's craft theme related to our Summer Reading Theme, "One World, Many Stories". The theme was Noodlehead stories. These are Jewish stories about "fools" from Eastern Europe. I read two of the stories and we did a related craft..creating noodlehead people. I will definitely post a picture from a child's craft and my sample craft soon. The kids had a fun time using the pasta, foam pieces, markers, stickers and googly eyes to make their own creations. Then they did an around the world word search. Fun was had by all!