YSS Regional Meet-Up: Southeastern Wisconsin

In February, a handful of library staff serving youth attended a YSS Regional Meet Up in Southeastern Wisconsin.  We met first at Hales Corners Public Library, where Patrick Lodge kindly hosted our group.  We shared lunch and shared programming ideas:

-No School You Build It Workshops to draw in nearby grade school kids.  Sessions have included baking cookies, crafting monsters, and making slime.
 
-A monthly art program, Art Lab, where one type of art style is focused on each session aka channeling their inner Andy Warhol and designing a soup can or making a black and white photo collage and coloring it.

-STEAM storytime for preschoolers with open ended activities all revolving around a picture book. 

-A Fantasy Readers Book Club: exploring genres, sharing a favorite book within a genre, no book discussion or reading the same book required!

-K-Pop Teen Programming: make your own K-Pop logo stamps, trying snacks, watching videos, debating the merits of each group.

-Workshops for Middle Schoolers: stop motion animation, altered books, weaving and shrinky dinks.

-Kids Fun Zones during SRP: setting up passive stations, like crafts, a sensory station, interactive touch and feel.  Every summer there's a Mini Golf course set up by staff which patrons can play.

After lunch and the program swap, we traveled down the road to meet up with Abby Bussen at Muskego Public Library.  Abby gave us a tour of her impressive new children's space, and it was great to hear about the process of obtaining funding, working with architects and designers, and how specific features have been received by the public.

We were lucky enough to finish our time together with a BreakoutEDU activity on diverse library collections.  Created by Caitlin Schaffer and Jenny Barreau, this BreakoutEDU experience was an interactive way to look at creating diverse collections for children and teens.  We learned a lot, both about diversity in children's literature but also about how to create an exciting escape room using BreakoutEDU.  (If you’ll be at WAPL and would like to experience this in person, Caitlin and Jenny will be presenting this session on Thursday.)

Some very smiley attendees!

Thanks again to everyone who attended and to Patrick and Abby for hosting us!   

Another YSS Meet Up is happening soon, this time in the Northwest part of the state.  On April 19th, you can meet up in Spooner and Grantsburg with other library staff serving youth.  Find more information here and RSVP today!