Recieve a letter from the Librarian - Brainstorm

I was thinking about how young children rarely receive mail and how fun it is for them to receive a letter of their very own. If I still had a library, I would love to have a program where children who register for the program would receive a personal letter from me. One idea is to send a letter for book related achievements such as reading a book out loud to their parents or reading a certain number of books. For time and simplicities sake I would choose only one of these ideas for the program, not combine them. I think a personal letter would be a great way to establish a connection with the children and their families. I would let the children know that they are always welcome to stop by the desk and say "hi" and to let the librarian know if they have any questions or book suggestions for the library. It might help to make the library seem less like an unapproachable institution and more like a place where they have a voice,and hopefully some of that will stick as they get older. This type of program may be too time consuming to run continuously so I would have a certain time frame for parents to register and/or for the children to complete their tasks such as a small Winter Reading Program.

Pricess Kate engagment party! - Brainstorm

I've been meaning to post this one for so long that I think it falls under the category of old news, but the engagement of Price William and Princess-to-Be Kate provides us with all sorts of programming opportunities. You can host a real princess tea party for the kids, or, since William and Kate are both young, rich, hip, and famous, this could be your chance to pull off a more upscale royal engagement party for the teens. If you think it's been too long since the announcement, you could always start planning ahead for the wedding. Has anyone had a Royal Wedding themed event yet?

Black Friday

I just noticed that the Discovery Kids digital cameras are on Black Friday sale at Kohl's for $25 (usually $79). My last Summer Reading Program we gave one of these away for the final prize in the baby through preschool reading group (and I paid a heck of a lot more than 25 bucks). If your up at 3a.m. this Friday, keep in mind those big ticket Summer Reading Program prizes and maybe you can stretch that budget a little bit more. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Gift Bag Craft

I've been waiting to hear back from some performers, so in the mean time here's another in-house program idea. This is one I used at my library every December. I would buy a bunch of cheap plain gift bags of varying sizes, then I would go into my craft cabinet and pull out scissors, glue, crayons, markers, paints, glitter, stamps, stickers, scrap paper, ribbon, cotton balls, googly eyes, and whatever else I could find. Then I let the children and their parents create their own personalized gift bags. This is a great program because it's for all ages and it's seasonal without being devoted to any particular holiday. And of coarse the best part, it's CHEAP!

Hometown Scrapbooks - Brainstorm

Since libraries all over the country are doing the themes "One World, Many Stories" and "You Are Here" I thought it might be within the theme to have the kids/teens connect with other kids/teens in other parts of the country. You could have a program where the kids make a scrapbook or 'zine' about their city by bringing in photos, letters, poems, urban legends, and stories about their hometown. Then trade copies of your publication with other libraries in other states. Librarians all over the country are looking for cheap programing so you could use a listserv such as PUBLIB or PUBYAC to find a least one who would be interested in trading scrapbooks. You can then keep the scrapbooks of the other cities on display over the coarse of the Summer Reading Program. Thoughts?

Free Children's Author Visit

Children's author Lynn Baldwin would like promote her latest picture book, "Wally One-Sock", by giving free readings and signings at Detroit area libraries. Though she will do the readings for free, she does ask that she be allowed to sell the book to those who wish to buy a signed copy. For information on the book, "Wally One-Sock" go to: http://www.wallyonesock.blogspot.com/. The book can also be found on Amazon.com.

Lynn can be contacted at: baldwinl [at] prodigy.net

Apples - Brainstorm

It may be late in the season for this one but you can always put in your pocket for next year. I would love to do an apple tasting program where I buy a few of several different type of apples and cut up slices so people can try and compare the different kinds. Depending on what age group this program is designed for it can be accompanied by apple themed games, songs, and stories.

Geocaching - Brainstorm

This would be a great 2011 SRP program for both teens and adults. For those of you who don't know, geocaching is a treasure hunt using GPS units. The treasure, or cache, could be anything from small trinkets to special locations. How it usually works is, someone hides a cache and then places the coordinates on the geocaching website: www.geocaching.com. The cache often includes a notebook for those who find it to leave their name, the date, and anything else they would like to say. Sometimes the cache has a theme so hunters can take one trinket from the cache and leave another. For example when I went on a hunt with a toy theme, I left a Mickey Mouse Pez Dispenser and took a small toy airplane. There are hundreds of thousands of caches all over the world.
Oh the program possibilities.
1. You could plant your own cache somewhere on the library grounds and take a group of teens around looking for the hidden treasure.
2. You could have a program out of making a cache and hiding it, for example have the teens make something or bring something to put in a box, work together to decide on a location, find the coordinates for that location, then submit the coordinates to geocaching.com.
3. You could send out a "travel bug" with your library's name and email address on it. A "travel bug" is a trinket people leave at a cache. When the "travel bug" is found the finder goes to geocaching.com to register when and where they found it, then they hide it at another cache for someone else to find. If you follow the bug's progress online you can see it travel all over the world. The problem with this is that the bug may travel very slowly and might not make it very far during the duration of the Summer Reading Program.
4. You could give out coordinates at the library and let people with their own GPS units to find the "treasure" on their own. If you do this you could direct them toward historically or otherwise significant areas of your city or direct them to a local business that agreess to give out a prize if the patron tells them they found the location using the coordinates from the library.

I think the geocaching website is worth checking out. It certainly fits the theme and other than getting a hold of a GPS the programs can be practically free.

Minute To Win It - Brainstorm

This may be an obvious one. I'm not sure if this one has come up already, but how awesome would this be as a teen or tween program? And cheap. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Minute to Win It is a TV game show where contestants have one minute to complete ridiculous challenges such as stacking paper cups and keeping three balloons up in the air. All the challenges are done with regular household items so the game itself is pretty much free. You probably have most of the supplies in your craft storage closet. The only thing you may need to put money into would be the prize, and that could be anything...an ipod nano, a five dollar gift card, the glorious feeling that you've won...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDwh1UbB5qA

You Are Here

Ahhh fall is creeping in. It's a beautiful time of year when a librarian's thoughts turn toward next year's Summer Reading Program. I caught wind that next year's theme is travel. This should be a fun one. It's funny how you can start planing in October and still be scrambling to get it all together before school lets out. Oh, I miss the scrambling....but then again, no I don't. So now I've been adding travel themed programs to my mental list of kid's and teen programing. Since I don't have a library right now, I think it's time I start sharing this list with the Youth Services Librarian world. Maybe someone else can benefit from my brain always being in program planing mode.

Let me introduce myself

Hello World,
My name is Robin and up until recently I was a youth and teen services librarian. I left my job at the library about a year ago to stay at home with my one-year-old son. I love being a stay- at-home mom, but my inner librarian just won't keep silent. I can't turn off the part of my brain that sees something interesting and says "oh, that would make a great library program." So here you are librarians, a blog full of all the program ideas I would be doing if I still had a library. Please feel free to comment or add your own ideas. Thanks for reading.