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
As librarians, we are continually challenged and tasked with creating programming that teach multiple literacies — including information literacy, digital literacy, news literacy and media literacy — in fun, engaging and interactive ways.Â
In honor of Star Wars Reads Month in October, our library held programs related to the iconic movies. We capped it all off with a Star Wars Spelling Bee at the end of the month, at 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday.
We picked specific words related to the movies and provided example sentences related to the movies to provide context. The event ended with a costume contest.
The L.P. Fisher Public Library is well-known in our community (Woodstock, N.B., Canada) for our board game programs, like Connect Four Tournaments, Family Game Nights or our (competitive!) Chess Club.
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 month, I’ve handed the spotlight to a dear friend who always knows what obscure holiday it may be and how to celebrate it! Kami Bumgardner is the youth services coordinator at Maitland Public Library in Maitland, Fla., and works primarily with toddlers and kids through fifth grade. Any questions or comments will be forwarded to her. Enjoy!
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The Fifth Annual Middle School Panel was a great opportunity for parents/guardians to hear about the local middle schools and their programs. This program was geared for parents/guardians of fourth- and fifth-graders.Â
The event was hosted by the Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library in partnership with 17 area schools and organizations. Program representatives from the area schools addressed parents, legal guardians and students about their respective middle schools in terms of academic programs, resources and performance.
This program was offered as part of Thinking Money exhibit, a traveling exhibit about financial literacy offered by the ALA Public Programs Office and the FINRA Foundation.
The West Linn Public Library holds an every-other-month Trivia Night in our Community Room. We do not require registration but ask people to form teams of two to five people and just show up. People who do not come with a team are welcome to join another team as long as it remains five people or less. The program is targeted to adults, but all ages are welcome, and we usually have at least one family with kids that shows up.Â
The holidays always bring a lot of traffic to our libraries, and December 2016 was no exception. We offered Light Up The Holidays: Stories and Crafts as a children's program in all of our eight branches and even one of our Bookmobile stops. The program covered four different holidays that fell during the same week last year.
For the past three years the Lakeville Public Library has hosted a Noon Year’s Eve celebration on Dec. 31. We make party hats, dance, have photo booths and do a countdown to noon. The festivities end with a huge pizza party.
This is one of our largest and costliest events of the year; last year's party attracted more than 200 guests.
The Tom Green County Library System began a tabletop gaming program three years ago to build community and provide a fun activity for all ages. Out of that program grew the West Texas Table Top Convention (WT3C), an annual library-sponsored event intent on celebrating not only tabletop games, but all aspects of geek culture.
Welcome to another installment of Kinesthetic Library Programming! Â This time we're going to learn about bringing yoga to your littlest patrons and their caregivers.
Anamosa is a community of 5,533 in eastern Iowa, and it's quite remote. Many families drive 30 to 50 minutes to the nearby cities of Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Dubuque looking for family activities.
Our residents are always looking for things for kids to do close to home, so the Anamosa Library & Learning Center put together a spring-long, superhero-themed program series for all ages, culminating in a private showing of “Avengers: Endgame” at a movie theater in Cedar Rapids.Â
Our DIY Squishies program allowed our teens to be producers as well as consumers as they made/designed their own toys.
In honor of Black History Month in February, the Portland Library held an all-ages event with screenings, games and activities celebrating black superheroes. We screened episodes of “Static Shock,” a TV show from the early '00s that featured a black superhero, and had an array of games, coloring pages and a book display.
We have held the event for the past four years, and it has grown in popularity each time.
Spring break is coming — meaning that many of you will soon find yourself with a crowd of young people (and their parents) at your library, eager for entertainment. Are you ready?
Even if you are running behind with your planning, there is still time to pull together an exciting spring break line-up. Check out this list for some of our favorite kid, teen and family programs. Do you have other plans? Share them in the comments.
ALA, in partnership with the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, invites public libraries to apply to be part of a national tour of the traveling exhibition Thinking Money for Kids.
Is there anything sweeter than a new baby? The arrival of a new child is always cause for excitement — especially because it means there is a new reader to welcome into the world!
Story Time in the Orchard is an all-ages story time hosted by Boyertown Community Library and Frecon Farms. It is held outdoors on Thursdays at 9 a.m. from mid-June through October, weather permitting.
This program enhances awareness of local agriculture, provides a family experience of nature and boosts health literacy while having fun.
