Recent library programs!

October was a very busy month at my library, particularly for programs. Now, I am the only youth librarian in my library so I do not only all the buying of books, the cataloging, reference work, story times, outreach and programs so I don't necessarily have as many programs as a larger library system would have. However, I was very pleased with the programs that happened in October and I had good attendance at just about all of them.

I had my very first teen program at my new library. It was a henna program. Henna was very popular at my last library and I just decided to go with something I was fairly comfortable with at this point since my new library has never had any teen programs whatsoever. I had a total of five teens turn out. I know that number isn't very large but I was pleased. When I do henna, what I do is find patterns in books or online that may look like something the teens would want to do. Just about all of the time they don't actually follow those patterns and that is totally fine. They may take bits and pieces of it and add them to their own designs making for some really creative henna tattoos. Plus, this is a great program to just socialization. I had four girls and one boy turn up for the program and the girls, who were all at least a year or two older, gladly helped the boy with his designs and drew on him just like they had drawn on each other. I mostly stayed out of the way after I told them a bit of history about henna and then how to take care of it their design after. It's a very easy program and the teens were all clamoring to do it again. I will probably do it in the summer when we might be able to do it outside which then allows the henna to dry quicker.

I had two kids programs in October also. Each October, Minnesota gives students 2-3 days off of school for MEA. I knew I wanted to hold one program during that time period to have something for parents to bring their kids to, to see what new materials the library had to offer, and to just get people in the door. I decided to do these toilet tube monsters. I had 26 kids show up with a mess of parents of attached and it turned out to be a fun program. I had covered all the tables beforehand which cut down quite a bit of the clean up after. I had allotted one hour to do this program but in reality it went over an hour, particularly because some of the creations had to dry a bit before parents were willing to take them home. However, I was really impressed with all the little monsters that came out of the program. For me, this program was basically free. My library had a ton of these educational points so I was able to buy lots of paint and paintbrushes with those points, which cost me nothing. Additionally, all the library staff, and the Friends of the Library, saved toilet paper and paper tube rolls for me so I didn't have to spend money there either. The cleanup I had after was just really washing out the brushes.

Then, last week I tackled a very major program, at least by my standards. I had a pumpkin carving program at the library. It was a registration required program. I tend not to do many registration required programs because I think it keeps people away, rather than inviting them in. But in this case, I needed some idea of how many pumpkins to buy. I felt very fortunate because the local grocery store cut the prices of the pumpkins for my library because I had to buy 30 of them for the program. Again, I prepped the room, covering the tables and getting extra garbage cans from the maintenance department. (Do this! It truly helps.) I also had purchased 25 pumpkin carving kits. It was the only way I could think to do the carving without people having to bring big knives to the program when there would be a lot of children running around.

I had 25 families register for the program but bought 30 pumpkins because I knew there would be some drop-ins, and I was right. There were also one or two cancellations of the registered people so all in all, total attendance was about 55 people, adults and kids. It was messy, loud, warm, but lots of fun. There were no accidents, I had refreshments on hand, and some band-aids on hand just in case. The program was scheduled for an hour and a half and that worked out well, particularly since a few families came later and by then, there was more space and more tools to work with because some of the other families were working on different parts of the pumpkins by then.

I felt very lucky because my Friends of the Library is really the group that made this program happen for me. They donated the money to buy the pumpkins which you know, was pretty necessary. I think I want to do this again next year but I want to find more safety carving knifes rather than the carving kits I had purchased because towards the end of the program, they were breaking and bending after so much use.

There were lots of compliments at the end of the pumpkin carving program so I definitely want to do it again. I know a lot of people signed up because A) free pumpkin (one per family) and B) all the mess was at the library and not at home. I also did have a craft, this ghost paper plate which was a big hit. A lot of the families did that after their pumpkins. All in all, it was a very well received program that got a lot of people into the library. I had fun and I know the participants did too.

Today, I am doing a Lego program because the kids are off of school again and I've been trying to schedule my programming towards when they have breaks. I think it should go well!

If you have any questions about these programs, please ask! My next big programming month is December as I'm doing several things over the winter break.