…but it’s only June! (fall program planning!)
Our township Park & Recreation office publishes an Activity Guide three times a year and we as a library are lucky enough to be given a page to include all of our upcoming events for residents to participate in. This is great for us because its FREE and it reaches so many people in our community. The down side – it’s the first week of summer reading and I need to start making some tentative plans for the fall! It’s still June and I’m think about what we want to do from September – December, which always stresses me out just a little bit.
Our children’s department provides programming opportunities for children from birth to eighth grade as well as their parents. Thankfully our story time schedule remains relatively constant with just a few changes when the population shifts from a HUGE number of babies to a HUGE number of preschoolers. Because we now have the Family Place national designation, we’re also offering a Parent-Child Workshop this fall for children ages 1 – 3 and their parents/caregivers.
I’m really trying to focus a lot of effort on children from K – 4th grade. We have a strong group of families that come to all of our story times and we have a lot of interest in our middle school group, but I want to make sure kids learn to be lifelong users of the library and they need to be visiting us regularly to learn the importance of the library. We are continuing our wildly popular Fun Fridays programs and I would really like to do some programming focused around STEM. There are so many great resources out there for STEM programming. I’d also like to try:
- an Elephant & Piggie Night
- a Scaredy Squirrel program
- include more Lego programs
- Origami Day is Nov. 11, so I think that would be a lot of fun
- Safari adventure with a combination of fiction and informational text
- and a Star Wars party
I have found that I can plan programs for really young children, and the middle schoolers, but figuring out programs for the third and fourth graders seems to be harder for me. Younger kids are relatively easy going and enjoy games and crafts. The older kids will tell me very clearly what they are interested in doing, but for some reason I have difficulty figuring out what the 8 – 10 year olds want to do. If anyone has any great ideas for this age group, please let me know!
I’m lucky to be part of a library that has a very strong middle school presence. I’ve mentioned our Junior Friends of the Library program before and we meet once a month during the school year. I regularly have around 30 kids coming to this program and I’m thinking about a couple of extra-special program for this age group as well. My tweens would absolutely love to do a lock-in at the library once night, and I’d be game (I think!) but it’s the rest of the staff that I would have to convince… My kids love anything with a challenge like a scavenger hunt or a marshmallow/toothpick building contest, which might happen this fall. I’m also trying to figure out a way to do a presentation and activity about brain development for teens. There is so much great information and I think it would help kids to better understand themselves. My thought is to pair it with a program for parents about teen development/parenting issues.