Blog posts this week

  Due to the end of Summer Reading, as you see, I have decreased the amount of posts the past 2 weeks. This week I am just posting on Friday about the Summer Reading parties. Thank you! Also there will be no posts from September 14-20, as I am going away on vacation.

Thursday's Post Topic: End of Summer Special Programs

This week we hosted two special programs , an local author visit and origami with a presenter picked from our Asst. Head of Children's Services for the library system. Both programs were great! I decided I wanted some fun programs to close off the Summer Reading Club, aside from the parties, which are happening next week.

 The first program was the author visit. The author is a friend of mine, Marcia Nass, who is a retired first grade teacher who published her first book. She read her book , "How to be a Bully, Not!" and was terrific with the kids. I loved the story and the way she presented it. The kids enjoyed it! Then she did a related craft with the story. The book she wrote is a picture book about bullying. Basically, the main character thinks he will be cool if he becomes a bully like his brother, but realizes he is actually cool being the nice guy he is. At the end he wears a crown saying "just like me" showing he was happy to be himself. So the kids all decorated crowns and wrote what they liked about themselves.  It is a great book and it has related activities at the end. If anyone is interested, give me your email and I can give you more information. Sadly I did not have any pictures of that program but I will say that the kids looked adorable in their crowns. They really enjoyed themselves and were very creative with the crowns.

 The second program was the origami program. The presenter, Karen Wellington, was great. She did a book talk on "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes". If you don't know this story, it is a bittersweet and heartfeld story about a sick girl who with the help of a friend decides to make 1,000 paper cranes because she heard a legend that the gods will make one feel better if they make 1000 paper cranes. In this book, they explain how to make a paper crane. Since there were a number of little kids, she decided to modify this and have them make a swan instead of a crane. They made two. They practiced on regular colored paper and then made their second one on the shiny colored paper. She was very helpful and also many of the parents came in to help the kids. I even made two of the origami items (shiny paper crane and lotus flowers). The kids loved making the origami and liked the presenter. I would definitely have her again at the library.

Here are some pictures of the origami that was made:

Monday's Post Topic: Summer Reading Post Part II

We'll I'm back and continuing with this topic. Hope you enjoy.

5. For food for the parties, it is easiest for many reasons to get the prepackaged individual chips you can get in bulk in Costco (and candy and cookies too if they have). It is less messy overall and less work.

6. I found an easy way to keep track of the book tallies of the kids who used the paper logs and not the computer system on Excel. It makes adding up the numbers a lot less time consuming. In a unrelated note, this method also helps me when I am doing book ordering.

7. Having many raffles at the party is a big draw and is a great way kill some of the time for Summer Reading.

8. It is good to have two sessions of storytime because it makes it a lot easier to be organized and having a more intimate group (even if that group is 15 kids compared to 30 kids, makes for better participation for the kids).

9. Plan the volunteer schedule way ahead of time. Make sure there is plenty of time to find volunteers and iron out their schedules and it is better to have too many because inevitably at some point one will not show up.

 I am so excited to be in the home stretch. It is kind of funny to see that a number of libraries are already done and some of them are already doing back to school programs.

Friday's Topic: Summer Reading is Almost Coming to a Close: Part I

 As I had mentioned the other day, I am basically finished with the formal programming of Summer Reading. All that I have left is two programs by outside presenters and the parties. I will get to those later. What I want to discuss today is how I felt Summer Reading went this Summer and how I improved from when I first started 6 years ago.

 My first year as a children's librarian, I was working part time as a trainee out in Long Island with several other children's librarians. That was a great way to introduce me to the field and teach me a lot because I learned from the other librarians there. That is not to say that the first Summer Reading I ever did was not without challenges, but it was a lot easier because I had a lot of support from the other staff members.

 Then, the following year I got a job as a children's librarian in Queens. Don't get me wrong, I love my job but it was very challenging at first going from a library with several children's librarians to a library where I was the sole children's librarian. The first summer reading program at this library, I don't know how I got through it. I asked a million questions of my mentor, a talented and terrific children's librarian named Jillian. I was worried how it would turn out but I did not have specific concerns because I did not do it before, I did not know what to expect. I learned some important things that summer:

1. Make sure I plan out how I want to work the waiting list. This took me a few years to figure out because attendance in the summer is unpredictable but even with that, a pattern emerged the last few years. The pattern was that program attendance was strong in the beginning of the summer, but became more quiet later on. My latest idea was to call people and if they didn't come after 2 or 3 times, basically just write them off and let other people come. Also we told the families when we called them that we had a waiting list and if they were not interested to let me know so we could let someone else off the waiting list come. A number of parents were very receptive to this and let me know if they changed their mind about attending for the summer.

2. Make sure everything is planned out ahead and the crafts can be realistically completed. Initially when I first started Summer Reading at this library, I thought I had to have all these elaborate crafts with materials. It turned out those materials were very costly and the crafts were difficult for the children to do. I knew we had a manual but I did not play much attention to it. I learned after the summer, the Summer Reading Manual is my bible and my best friend for Summer Reading. There are so many great ideas in there that are easy and with readily available craft supplies.

3. I do not need to do separate groups for the K-3 and the 4-6 grades crowds. It turned out for my 4-6 grade craft only a handful of kids came. So I turned it into a Summer Reading Craft for school aged kids. I also discovered some collage type crafts which allow the kids to be very creative and are good for K-6 grades kids.

4. Make sure I have everything I need for the party and it is organized well before the party begins. I found it is always difficult to do the party no matter how much experience you have because of space, preparation and time constraints. I learned that though having a lot of volunteers makes it smoother and better organization helped make the party flow better.  One of the most obvious things..have two parties if you have too many kids.

I see this is a long post, so I will continue it on Monday. Enjoy your weekends all!

Wednesday's Post: Last week of Preschool Summer Storytime

  This will be one of the last sessions of Preschool Summer Storytime. Then I will take a much deserved break :) and continue in the end of September my regular fall Toddler Storytime and Mother Goose Storytime. Toddler Time is for ages 2-4 and Mother Goose is for ages 5 mos-2. This week's theme was multiculturalism. We read the following three books:

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort


                                                                
One is a Drummer: A Book of Numbers by Roseanne Thong

                                                                
Shades of People by Shelley Rotner


   These books were good because they invite children to answer questions about the numbers, colors and people. However, I don't know why, but the kids were not able to concentrate on the books today (more so the last book). I think maybe it is because we had a small group and the content of some of the kids in the group.

   Favorite songs this week: Happy and You Know it, Ring around the Rosie and Hokey Pokey.

   The craft we did today was multicultural dolls. I hope to get a picture up. There were paper doll cutouts with clothes from different countries and the kids got to dress up a few dolls and glue and color the clothes. They had fun. After they did some related coloring sheets.

Tuesday's Topic: Book Talk-Lunch by Denise Fleming

 Lunch is an adorable picture book by Denise Fleming. Denise writes a lot of great books for storytime such as: Mama Cat Has Three Kittens and In a Small, Small Pond among many others. This book is colorfully illustrated and simple enough for kids 2 and up. There is a mouse who loves to eat all sorts of fruits and vegetables. I have a set of plush soft fabric fruit that I use with this story and its a hit. This story is great to use for many concepts such as color and foods. The book is highly recommended for kids 2-5 for storytimes or to be read one on one.

Monday's Post: Summer Reading Craft (last craft in the summer)

  This is the final week of regular Summer Reading programming. Next week we have two presenters coming in, so we have activities, but I am not really running them. The two activities we will have is an author visit and origami. It should be fun.

  For the final craft, we did the theme of Australia and Africa. For Australia, they decorated a boomerang.  For Africa, they made a tribal mask. I hope to have pictures on here soon. They used foam pieces, markers, sequins, and beads for them. They looked great and the kids had fun.

 This is also the final week for children to submit their book logs or printouts of their books. I have a bulletin board where I made cutouts of luggages and children wrote their names on it, when they submitted a book log and they are all over the bulletin board. I worked it out so if they handed in a book log or printout, they get an invitation to the party. One is for kids 1-7 and another is for the older kids. Obviously if there are siblings, they can have the choice of going to one of the parties, whichever is more convenient. Normally, in the past, if there were other kids who did not complete the summer reading club and wanted to go the party, I would have a list of the kids who were invited and let them in first. If there was space, the other kids could stay but they would not get prizes. However, if they wanted I would give them a book log and register them and they could hand it in and get the prizes at a later date. It would be too late for them to do the raffle.

 I have to admit I am so happy it is winding down because even though its fun, it is so tiring. Glad had I some good volunteers to help.