Category: Programs

Summer Reading has had a lot of highs for me this summer. My stats are higher than I could have ever imagined. My goal was 200, but I flew past that in the beginning of July. How far past did I go? Only 100+ more! I ended up with 304 teens that read 742,000 pages. That puts participation up 80% and the pages read up 97%. The kids got a goal to reach 1 million pages next year; if they do my co-worker will shave his head at the final party. I’m a little worried he may have to do just that. (I have learned no to give them a challenge unless I’m willing to do it. As I learned this year when I got two pies in my face this year)

The reading program numbers weren’t the only thing up. The event numbers went through the roof as well. I did 23 teen events over 8 weeks and had 300+ people attend. (I think the actual number was 365, but I can’t remember off the top of me head.) This is more than double of what I had this year. I’m really hoping as we go into our fall session we can keep up the numbers. On Thursday I’m going to do a run down of all my programs and briefly covered what worked and what didn’t. I had some major hits like a Murder Mystery and Pizza Tasting that teens loved and pulled in high numbers.

While technically I should save the final party discussion for my next post, I wanted to talk about it now due to the huge success. We had 86 teens come to the final party and 58 stay the whole night. This is the biggest crowd ever, which was not only exciting but challenging. Usually we only have 30 teens so I had to restructure how we did things.

Normally we let the kids dictate how the night goes, but I decided to do rotations for the first part of the night. We divided the teens into teams via colored wristband (my attempt to break up cliques) and had them move between three different stations. One station was compromised of crafts, board games, and wii. I was a little worried about this station since my teens don’t come to craft activities, but it went over surprisingly well. The second station was split between ARC speed dating and giving me feedback about the teen stuff.  I am so glad I did the feedback part because I walked away with so many good comments that will help me shape the teen department as we move forward. The last station was floor games aka capture the flag and tag.Of course, this was the teens favorite part. I’m not sure what it is about capture the flag, but my teens would play it for the full 12 hours if I would let them. In fact, a lot of them went back out to play CtF once we entered free time.

OH and I got revenge for the pie in the face last year! It was so worth the year wait. Although, I did get TWO pies in my face. Ummm, I’m really hope this doesn’t become a yearly tradition! While the Lock-Ins always wear me out they are more than worth it. I’ve had several parents already report how much fun their teen(s) had and how days later they are still talking about it, which basically ensures they will continue in the future.

I recently did a program called Backpack Bling that consisted of making bottle cap pendants and buttons. Admittedly, crafts do not go over well so I only had about 10 teens between four sessions, but those who came had a blast! Since it was such a small number, I let them make as many as they wanted. I had a couple take advantage of that offer, but it was fun to seem them so excited about the buttons. I even had two girls walk out with a shirt full each! Here are some of the buttons that they made!

I’m lucky in that my work already had a button maker, so I only had to worry about getting supplies. I used Badge-A-Minit who actually have decent prizes. I got 500 buttons (all parts) for only $110! I know that sounds like a lot, but it averages to .22 a button, which in my opinion is pretty darn good. Not that all the buttons were used for this program. I also did buttons for school visits. I took the covers of the books I talked about and turned them into swag buttons for the kids.

For the bottle cap pendants, I cam across a great deal on Etsy where I got 50 flatten caps w/rings and epoxy drops for $14.00! I still have about half of these left and I hope to use them in Anime Club tomorrow. I mean seriously, they make the cutest chibi pendants ever. In Backpack Bling they weren’t as popular, so I’m interested to see how they go in Anime Club.

Only 2.5 more weeks left of Summer Reading. Of course, these two week contain some of my big hitting activities so it’ll be interesting to see what state I am come August.

I had some down time between my book groups toady and was trying to come up with some ideas for easy crafts that my Anime Club could do. We’ve been simply watching Anime the past 2 years, but I want to start adding in some extra elements to help with the boredom. I know a lot of the kids come to mainly socialize, but I don’t want them to leave because all we do is watch Anime they’ve already scene. I do ask them for suggestions, but it still is one they’ve love. I wish there were more hours in the day to track down suitable unknown Anime, but sadly there is not. So, here are my ideas to add some extra elements.

1. Sketch Pads. I know many of them LOVE to draw, but not all bring along a pad. So I thought I’d have sketch pads on hand for them to use.

2. Inches. I came across these today and there are some really cool ones! Best part about these are they can let their imagination go wild.

3. Buttons. We have a button maker at work that is actually a lot of fun to use. And I have a whole bunch of buttons as supplies for a Summer Craft program that no one is attending. So, I figured I would let the Anime teens have a go at using the supplies.

4. Ear Bud Wraps. Who doesn’t need one of these? They’re easy to make and again offer a lot of variety for personal taste and design.

5. Shrinky Dinks. I love the ones the Mooresville Public Library did. This may leave out the kids who can’t draw a bit, but I figured they could still do a design if nothing else. And I was thinking that I would just take them home and do it it the oven–offer a nice incentive to come back the next month to pick them back up.

If anyone has any other craft idea, please let me know!

The spring session of my after school program has come to an end, which is both bittersweet and a relief. I enjoy the 8 weeks that we spend during each session, but it’s nice to have one thing off my plate for a while. Of course, we start back up in a couple of weeks so downtime is very short this time around.

This year we teamed up with a local school and in my opinion was a huge success. A lot of my teens have transportation issues, so providing busing to and from the library was a huge help. The spring session pulled in on average 20 students per meeting, which looking back a year ago is almost 4x more than what we normally would. Since we had so many students, we decided to split them into two groups.

My group’s project was podcasting. The teens were allowed to work in pairs to create a single episode of a podcast. The only limitations we put on them was that it had to stay PG-13ish, but beyond that they could make their podcast on whatever they wanted. The topics we ended up with were: Paranormal Activity, an Interview from Area 51, Entertainment Report, School Basketball Highlights, and a Novel Sample (written by the teens). There were a few struggles along the way, especially with one group who just wanted to ad-lib the entire podcast. It took us putting them in front of the microphone and letting them flop before they would finally sit down and do an outline and brief notes. In the end, though, I’m quite happy with how all the podcasts turned out. I linked to the Area 51 Interview on Monday and today I’ll link to the Paranomal one as well.

Equipment Used: iMac/Macbook Pro, GarageBand, Snowball Microphone

The other group did a stop motion video. James Kennedy, author of Order of the Odd Fish, design a 90 second Newbery Project. When I heard about it, I thought it was a fabulous idea, as did my mentors. Paying homage to my boss, we went with The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (she was on the Newbery Committee the year it was chosen). I can’t tell you a lot about the process, since I was with this group, but from what I saw and heard they had a lot of fun. The mentors had the teens help with script and scenery that was used. The teens had a big say in the overall look at the film. (Side Note: Kennedy is a local-ish author and we were able to bring him down and have it work with the kids a little on this project. In fact, I have footage from his first visit. If you guys want to see it let me know and I’ll post it later this month!)

While I’m not privy to all the struggles they faced, I know the biggest frustration was with GarageBand and moving the project onto different Macs. For whatever reason, when we tried to move it to the work iMac, half the audio was corrupted. I still have no idea why, especially since all the other files moved over just fine. I can say I’ll be happy when our media lab is up and running because we won’t need a backup Mac aka my Macbook Pro for projects like this. The iMac will be in a nice quiet, recordable room instead of in the middle of a the noisy teen area.

In the end, the 90-sec short turned out fabulous. Admittedly, I have not read the book, so I don’t understand it all, but I certinaly understand the jist of the book. And, well, it’s pretty funny if I do say so myself.

Equipment Used: iMac/Macbook Pro, GarageBand, iMovie, Camera, Snowball Microphone

EDIT: Video is down for now, I’ll have it back up soon 🙂 We need to make a few small changes

I’m afraid I have a bit of zombie brain today. I’m on day 3 of 6 for middle school Summer Reading/book talk visits. I’ve already seen about 400 teens so far! I’m excited to be reaching that many teens, but at the same time it’s a bit exhausting. Add in the fact that I’m wrapping up my after school program, getting the final touches for Summer Reading done, and working crazily on a Murder Mystery event/practice. I’ve been literally coming home and collapsing with the puppy.

I have been reading, but mainly for my book talks. I do have at least one more of those books I want to do a write up for, but I want to wait until next week; mainly because it’s been the forerunner for the favorite book right now.

Basically, all this rambling is me saying I don’t have anything to talk about. I know….lame, right? BUT I do have something for you to listen to. One of the projects my after school program has been working on is podcasts. This is one of my favorites, an interview from area 51 w/an alien. The script was 100% written by one of the teens. Audio was recorded and edited using GarageBand. I’m so proud of the projects the kids ended with this session. If I’m lucky, I’ll even been able to show you the 90 sec Newbery video the other group did on Thursday (and talk a bit more about it as well)

So for now, enjoy the interview from Area 51.