The Programs

So since I've fallen off the wagon and it's been a million years since I've blogged I figured I'd fix that. Summer is winding down to a close and low and behold my Assistant Director is like, make sure you have all your programs and dates to me in two weeks for the Fall flyer, and I'm like... crap. So I've decide to list for you here the current ideas, some of which have been solidified.

1. Murder Mystery (I'm so pumped for this, we're also doing on in like two weeks, my first)
2. Campfire Nights
3. Extreme haunted house building
4. Banded books reading (where you read and talk about a passage from a banned book)
5. Genre roulete (the teen book club will roll giant genre dice to pick a new genre to read for book club)
6. Fort Time Story Time (building blanket forts will the little guys and going under it for story time)
7. Or course there will be two anime clubs *sigh* still stressed about that one.
8. I'm thinking on improv nights where we play all the improv games I learned as a Theatre major in college.
9. We did History jeopardy and that well well so I have more of those.
10. Anime bingo was a big hit some I'm thinking Harry Potter bingo, and maybe bingo based off other popular books
11. Lets not forget our annual holiday party, always a big event

I'm sure the list will grow in the next two weeks but here's what I'm working with so far. So excited!!

And the learning continues

So back in October I held an anime program called read it, watch it, draw it, and we did exactly those thee things. I had three girls in attendance. That was suppose to be the end of the program. I never had any intentions of continuing, but the three girls that I had continued to ask so I figured what the heck. I was so nervous about creating this new club, and I had just been offered the position that I'm in now so I was terrified of what I'd do if I had low or no attendance. I decided that even though I really wanted anime club to be a teen program, I'd take whoever would show up, so I'd have good numbers.

Fast forward from October to now, and at the last anime club there were like sixteen kids. It was out of control. I was trying to do candy sushi, but there were some parents who were annoyed because they thought that the kids were going to be drawing. The older kids were annoyed by the younger kids, and it just wasn't my best night ever. I decided that the only way to fix this was to go back to my original plan and make anime club 14 and up. There are so many activities that the older kids in the club want to do (like anime jeopardy, and anime charades, and cosplay) but we can't because the younger kids wouldn't be able to participate. The younger kid sin my group (between the ages of 9 and 12) see the anime drawings that I have posted around the room and they also like to draw and watch cartoons so it seems like anime club is the perfect place for them to be, or they've decided that they really love Pokemon so they should join anime club (apparently Pokemon is taboo now, who knew).

The issue that I've run into is that, with summer there are going to be more kids who want to attend programs and be at the library. If I restrict the age of Anime Club to 14 and up, then I have kids from ages 9 to 13 who now need something to do, and I have no idea what that something should be. I guess I could do like an anime junior, and they could watch tv and draw (which bored my older hard core anime loves to death), or I could do some times of drawing club because they all seem to love that. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

However I have learned the importance to choosing appropriate ages for programs, it's a bigger deal than I realized. I initially assumed that if everyone wanted to be there, then it would be okay, but I was wrong. Within the perimeters of the program everyone has to be on the same mental level or you'll always have kids who are "too advanced" to be there or "not at the level of others" and someone will always feel left out which is my worst fear.

At the end of the day this is almost a good problem to have. I have more kids attending a program than I can handle, now I just have to make sure I can find things for them to do that is mentally stimulating and fun for everyone.

Teen jeopardy

So when I was going through the summer read CD that hey gave us I stumbled across this History jeopardy power point that had already been created, all you have to do it run it. I sat and pondered using it because I didn't think that teens would want to do more homework after they has just finished with finals, man was I wrong. They were really excited when I told them about it, especially when I told them that the winning team would be winning summer read prizes.

I split the teens into two teams and connected my computer to a projector that we have in the community room so that everyone would be able to see the questions (answer) just like in real jeopardy. They had cookies and juice boxes as brain food and we played the game, it was so much fun. I think they fact that they were playing in teams took some of the edge off of some of the harder questions.

The game was quick, easy, and fun for everyone, and I was finally able to get rid of some of the random things we'd ordered and then realized we didn't know how we'd use. I hope that I can find more pre-made fun jeopardy games and maybe make this a monthly or bimonthly thing.

Let the hunt begin.

Keeping it up

So I'm learning that the hardest part organizing a club at the library isn't the actual organization and creation of said club, it's the up keep. I began an Anime Club at my library in December and it's taking off. I don't even have to beg kids to show up anymore because they just do it on their own *woot* however, I don't know a ton about Anime, I just know enough to make you think I know a ton.

The original plan was to show movies an let the kids draw pictures with a few drawing prompts thrown in to stretch the imagination. I got some kids who like to draw but then I drew in the die hard Anime fans and now I may be in a spot of trouble. They want to do more, but I have no idea what to do. The answer seems obvious, as them what they want and give it to them, yeah but see the problem is they want to do things like LARP (Live Action Role Play), and anime charades, and games and stuff, but I still have those kids who come every month and don't know enough about anime to properly participate in things like they (not to mention they may be too young) so I'm kind of stuck.

I'm thinking of google some games to play and ideas, maybe pinterest can help me out. I think a big part of the problem is that I have a very large age range with this club, how do I find something to keep everyone happy. Ugh!!