Inspired by a project in Jean Van't Hul's book "The Artful Parent: Simple Ways to Fill Your Family's Life with Art and Creativity,"Â children created colorful suncatchers with natural materials, clear contact paper and paper plates.
This is a simple and creative project for children and adults to complete together. When offered in person at the library, participants visited the library's garden to pick flowers, leaves and other natural items to use in their project.Â
Children aged 0 through pre-K were invited to bring the special “grand” in their life — Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, Papa, Opa and/or Oma — to this celebration of two generations. The program included crafts, Bingo, interactive fitness activities and a photo booth, as well as a story time with the children's librarian and sing-along.Â
The Unicorn Party was planned in response to the growing fandom associated with unicorns, particularly among children, tweens and teens. The program lasted 90 minutes and comprised several unicorn-based activities, unicorn snacks, a unicorn book display and a "live unicorn" (i.e. decorated pony).
This six-session pilot program encourages creativity — and interest in library services — for elementary- and middle school-aged children through open-ended art projects such as Watercolor Resist Paintings and Continuous Line Monsters.
We offered this program in collaboration with the organization Phoenix Family, which provided us with access to their existing after-school program and art supplies.
Fans of Sherlock Holmes, particularly those that love the BBC "Sherlock" series, were invited to enjoy an author Q&A, crafts and an escape room. Texas author Alan J. Porter presented his experiences writing Sherlock Holmes stories, then patrons participated in activities. Crafts included Perler bead character magnets, adult coloring, and decorating mugs and 221B Baker Street notebooks.
Exploring Big Ideas is a six-week philosophy program for kids. Using characters and images, the program aims to help children with communication and reasoning skills in a discussion-based class.
Patrons celebrated Mario Day on March 10 (Mar10) with plenty of Mario-related games, crafts and a photo booth for kids and teens.Â
It’s fair to say that COVID made for a meaningful — and very steep — learning experience for librarians. We became adept at virtual programs, no-touch lending, adopting social distancing, health and safety rules and much, much more.
It’s that time again! We rounded up some great library craft videos from across the internet that are perfect for Halloween.
Whether they are doing in-person craft events or take-and-make kits, these libraries share their creative crafts for the spooky season.
The goal of this program was to create a safe place for teens and tweens who are interested in K-Pop (Korean pop music). The program had a dance station, snack station, craft station and language lesson station. We bought snacks from a international supermarket and used our library's partnership with a local dance studio and language center to help staff the event.
Happy Halloween! With social distancing in place, spooky season is looking different this year ... but that won’t stop librarians from doing some creepy crafts.
Need some last-minute Halloween crafts? Here is a quick roundup of five library Halloween crafts you can use for take-and-make kits or virtual craft-along sessions to get your patrons feeling spooky before the 31st.
My library, like so many others, is not doing in-person programming this summer. We still wanted to do some kind of big summer activity, a la summer reading, but since many of our young patrons don’t have internet access at home, we didn’t want to make it a solely virtual program. So we decided on themed grab-and-go bags.
The Kids' Activity Kit program will help our library provide activities and promote learning while we are closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are currently six different categories of kits that have been cataloged and circulated in our community.
Each kit comes in a freezer or AV bag and is labeled with items that the patron can keep as well as items that need to be returned. There are craft kits available as well as kits that promote fine motor and important skills for early childhood education.
When the library closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I knew that I wanted to interact with patrons in ways that aren’t completely digital or Zoom-based. When the library is open, I organize craft classes, which are especially popular during the summer months. I decided to continue these classes from home.
I needed a way to get supplies to patrons. These "to-go bags" contain all the craft materials they might not have at home, allowing for our library to continue teaching and connecting with them. It’s the closest we can get to our summer in-person programming during this time.
The average American throws away more than four pounds of garbage each day. That's a lot of pill bottles and pickle jars that could end up in a landfill.
But thanks to a partnership with our local waste prevention program, North Olympic Library System gave new life to cast-off trash and got people thinking about how they can reduce waste.
Summer is just around the corner. While we might be looking forward to the warmth, fear not — we'll be clamoring for some air-conditioned activities soon enough. Keep your out-of-school teens (and everyone else) busy with these fun and easy DIY activities.
The L.P. Fisher Public Library in Woodstock, New Brunswick, likes to periodically hold Family Art Nights. It is a process-oriented, intergenerational program that allows people of all ages, whether they think of themselves as “artistic” or not, to try their hand at something creative. There is no defined outcome, so people can experiment and enjoy the process of play, something that is very good for relieving stress.
The holidays are a good time for warm and fuzzy programs — from collecting winterwear to give to charity, to creative food drives, to budget- and earth-friendly adult craft activities that offer quality time and lessen patrons’ shopping loads. Here are a few of our favorites.
The Crafting for Charity group has existed at the Morton Grove Public Library since 2014. They meet once a month to work on their current project, choosing each project based on needs in the community.
Most recently the group undertook a project to create 75 Twiddlemuffs — knitted or crocheted hand muffs with various items (buttons, beads, etc.) attached — which serve the dual purpose of keeping hands warm while giving the fidgeting hands of many Alzheimer’s patients something to play with.
