One of Those Days…

It’s been a fairly busy week for us – Life-Size Board Games on Monday, story times, Enchanted Library rehearsal, meetings and more.  But today was our last Parent/Child Workshop for our fall series.  It started off as a great morning, even without our usual extra help we were able to get everything setup, the toys in place, and were sitting and actually waiting for families to show up!  Then as people started streaming into our doors… our power went out!  And not just in our building, but across the entire township.  So rather than trying to reschedule for next week, (because of course the room we were in had no windows and was pitch black) we migrated all our nicely set up toys into a (much) smaller room with a bank of windows where we could at least see the toys.
We had toys spilling out into the hallway, finger painting in the actual hallway and mayhem reigned for about an hour.  And you know what?  It worked.  Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but the parents were able to talk to the development specialist, the kids had a GREAT time finger painting (some were completely new to the idea!) and the toys, as usual, were well loved.  We definitely would have appreciated a little air conditioning, but we made it work!
But that’s how we children’s librarians roll – flexible, flexible, flexible!  The parents graciously helped us move toys and get somewhat organized and I think the smaller space actually forced the parents to interact even more together.  I could see other programs just falling to pieces without electricity, but we figured it out.
As I said, this is our last workshop in the fall series, but we’ll be back in the late winter when everyone needs something to do.  We’ve also finished most of our program planning for the winter/spring and although we’ll be busy, I’m excited about some great new ideas that I can’t wait to try.  A sneak peek for our early literacy crowd?  Art exploration, more dance parties, some new programming on Saturdays and more!