• Activities

    American Helicopter Museum Visit

    Last night was our last big program of the summer (yay!) where we invited the American Helicopter Museum to give the kids some brief information about helicopters and then the kids got the chance to sit in a helicopter, push some buttons and take some photos.  For the event, we…

  • Activities

    3rd & 4th Grade Book Discussion

    We started our 3rd & 4th grade book discussion last summer and had some great experiences and the kids who attended all read the books!  This is particularly amazing because I can’t always get our middle school students to read the book (which can make a book discussion difficult), but…

  • Activities

    Fall Programming Ideas

    Although in our area children do not go back to school until after Labor Day, I’m already hard at work finalizing fall programming dates and times as well as beginning to promote events that are upcoming in September.  Our summer reading program doesn’t even end until the 29th, so we…

  • Activities

    Summer Camp Outreach – Shrinky Dinks

    camp

    This week at summer camp we made Shrinky Dinks!  If you’re unfamiliar with Shrinky Dinks you can get Shrinky Dink paper from Amazon.  It’s basically a sheet of plastic that can be decorated using colored pencils and shrinks when you put it in the oven (or in our case –…

  • Activities

    Movement & Play

    My mom just sent me an article written in The Washington Post about ADHD and children in school.  The article states that diagnosis for ADHD is up to 11% in 2011 from just 7.8% in 2003.  There are a number of theories about the reason for this rise in fidgeting…

  • Activities

    Story Time Theme: Langauge

    This is the last week of our summer story time schedule!  YAY!!! We’re crossing things off the summer schedule and I have to say that I’m pretty excited take a little break until the fall session starts.  Overall, even though I had a huge crowd signed up for story time…

  • Activities

    Catapult Science Workshop

    pom poms

    Today we’re going to be creating own very own catapults to test out!  I came across this idea from the Libraryland blog and from the Show Me Librarian blog.  Both had great ideas and I combined them as well as some ideas of my own to create, what I think,…

  • Activities

    Robot Building – Part 2

    I survived our robot building workshop this afternoon! It was a lot of controlled chaos, but I think the kids and many of the parents had a really great time building, exploring, imagining, and just having a really great time together. We ended up with over 100 people for this…

  • Activities

    Robot Building – Part 1

    I’m not sure that anyone who isn’t a children’s librarian understands the feelings of being smack in the middle of summer reading with programs happening on a daily (sometimes hourly) schedule, reference questions flying at you a mile a minute, and kids and parents, nannies, grandparents, and tutors in every…

  • Activities

    Summer Camp Outreach

    Every year the library partners with the local Park & Recreation Department to bring a library program out to the summer day camp.  This year we’re focusing our services on children ages 5 – 8, which is a little easier than offering a 30 – 45 minute program for the…