Superhero Party @ the Library

We had so much fun last night with a superhero themed party for kids in Kindergarten and 1st grade and a second party for children in grades 2 – 4.  I thought this might be a big draw for our patrons so I broke the group up to accommodate a large crowd.  Each party ran for about 45 minutes with just enough time in between to clean everything up and set up again.

I always begin our parties with some sort of read aloud – a story or a chapter, something so the kids understand that we are in the library and books are important!  For our younger audience, we began with the story DC Super Friends: Brain Freeze by J.E. Bright a quick easy reader that shows a bunch of the superheroes which lends itself to an exciting conversation of who our favorite superheroes are.  After our story we decorated our very own superhero masks printed on bright-colored cardstock!  While this was going on we practiced using our x-ray vision and our senses to figure out the mystery items in different brown paper bags.  I chose Cheerios, carrots, grapes, and popcorn for the kids to guess and they had a lot of fun.  When all of our masks were done, we tested our superpowers by doing an obstacle course with a limbo stick, some cones to dodge, a ball to bounce, a jump rope and a hula hoop to jump through.  The kids had a great time!

For our older kids, I changed the program to adapt to their skills.  We also began with a story DC Super Heroes: Flash, Ice and Flame by Jane B. Mason a beginning chapter book that was a lot of fun to read aloud.  We just read chapter 3 before getting down to business!  I created a library super hero comic page with boxes and text, allowing each of the kids to create their own superhero and villain for the story.  The kids were very creative and colorful with their comics.  Afterward, we went on a scavenger hunt in the non-fiction section.  Each child received a 3″x5″ card with a superhero and a clue.  Their job was to find the other 2 clues and their villain taped to the bookshelf at a specific call number.  The kids had a lot of fun and I’m not sure how much they really learned about looking for call numbers, but I figure that any little bit of library instruction I can give them is better than nothing!

Our superhero party was a lot fun for the kids at both age levels!  If you’re interested in any of the materials or even the clues for the superhero scavenger hunt, leave me a comment or email me and I can share what I have!