Friday, July 7, 2023

Fun Fridays - Brunch Bunch

Jamie Mercer is the Head of Youth Services at W.J. Niederkorn (Port Washington) Library and shares some extra fun with easy and/or FREE programming ideas/tips.

Image by 200 Degrees from Pixabay

Happy Friday!  Back with another Fun Friday program that I hope your tweens and teens will enjoy: Brunch Bunch!

So tweens and teens are always hard to reach for programming for a number of reasons including being involved in many activities already and also (if you are trying for a weekend program) they enjoy sleeping in. A lot.  Which they do need to do on a developmental level. 

One of my more successful, longer-running, and I found more impactful programs that I ran for tweens and teens was a book club called Brunch Bunch.  I held it later in the morning, one Saturday a month (around 11am…. I think in the end we may have even pushed it back to noon).  We discussed a monthly book selection and ate brunch together (the brunch varied…we had a waffle bar, fruit, hot pockets, yogurt parfaits, basically whatever was on sale that week at the grocery store that my budget allowed for). 

When Brunch Bunch started, I always selected the title, but it was great because as the book club grew an evolved, we began selecting the books together each month.  We tried to vary the genres so that everyone’s tastes were included.  It was always a nice surprise when someone would say, I usually don’t like this type of book, but I really did enjoy reading this title, etc. 

Brunch Bunch is a little bit of a different twist on a book club, but I think it gives it that little extra appeal for tweens and teens.  I would definitely recommend trying it if you have been thinking about book clubs for older youth.  

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