Chicks in the Library!

 Chicks in the Library!

One of the best parts of spring at the Middleton Public Library is chick week. It's just like Shark Week, but cuter. For two years now, baby chicks have spent their first week of life at the library, and people love it. Chicks make a wonderful temporary library pet with their sweet chirps and funny antics!

The week includes chicken themed storytimes, chick meet and greets, chicken crafts and more. Before the chicks arrive, patrons vote on literary themed names for the chicks picked out by library staff. It isn't all about the cuteness though. Information is provided about the breeds of chickens, rules and regulations for keeping chickens, and a video all about raising chickens plays on a loop near the brooder. 

To see pictures from the chick photo shoot take a look at Middleton Public Library's Facebook Page.

Let us know what cool things your library is doing these days!

Winter Programming Ideas

Image by 8926 from Pixabay

In a recent ALSC blog post, La Crosse County Library Youth Librarian Kirsten Caldwell shared some fun programming ideas for winter! 

She writes: "Winter is here and even though we are starting to prep for summer reading, the patrons are living in the moment. We have our schedule full of winter programming to keep our families busy during these cold Wisconsin months! I can say that I am never bored and my planner, coffee, and chocolate are necessities."

To read all her ideas, stop here. [Winter Programming. Caldwell, Kirsten. ALSC blog. December 17, 2023.]

You can find more posts on her Early Literacy Librarian blog.

Collaborative Bulletin Boards - An SLP Win

In a recent ALSC blog post, Lisa Bintrim, a member of ALSC's School Age Services Committee, shared her success with bulletin boards that are a collaborative effort by the kids that drop into the library.  Inspired by the Passive Programming Playbook: 101 Ways to Get Library Customers Off the Sidelines, she created one of the more popular passive programs at her library.

She writes: "The most popular passive programs at my library have been collaborative bulletin boards. I pick a theme and then put out materials for simple art projects that the kids can add to the board. The kids always get excited when they see the yellow bucket because they know that means there’s a project for them! 

Collaborative bulletin boards are great for summer reading programs. They keep kids busy during the school break with much less effort than putting together a structured program. And they fit perfectly with this summer’s CSLP theme: All Together Now. "

To read her examples and ideas, please stop here. [Bring Kids All Together Now - with Collaborative Bulletin Boards. Bintrim, Lisa. ALSC blog. March 25, 2023.]

Wait, what? You don't have bulletin boards? No problem.  Perhaps you have shelf ends, wall space or doors that can become your own "mini-bulletin boards."

Constructive Destruction Programs for Teens

In a recent Teen Librarian Toolbox post, Austin Ferraro shared their library's success in refocusing middle-schoolers who gathered at the library and often created chaos.

Austin writes: "In late 2021 we started to see some real challenges with how our teens and our non-teen-staff were interacting. The massive amount of unfocused energy our middle schoolers especially bring into the library space and the larger clumps they tend to travel in on Fridays were intimidating to some of our staff, and even in the Teen Center there were behavior struggles. We were also fighting a losing battle against the remnants of straws, Takis bags, and anything else they could get their hands on to destroy while they were hanging out from becoming Teen Center decor. Despite our best efforts, monitoring clean-up for waves of middle schoolers coming and going from a room full of at least forty of them at a time with that much unstructured energy was not feasible – banning food and drinks long term isn’t an option for us either."

The solutions - genius! They can be easily adopted at any library.  Stop here to read about how they made lemonade out of lemons with their unfocused teens. [Programming with Constructive Destruction. Ferraro, Austin. Teen Librarian Toolbox. School Library Journal. March 17, 2022]

Tuesday Tips - February Guessing Game

Sam Jones is the Youth Services Librarian at the Beaver Dam Public Library. She shares tips to make your job easier in her Tuesday posts.

We decided to put together a fun, passive guessing game for Love Your Library Month. We had some leftover Hershey Kisses, so we put them in a container and had people guess how many Kisses were in it. We ran it for a month and got a ton of different guesses, ranging from 20- 2,000. Some people really took their time to think about a guess, while others put down the first number that came to their mind. 

We gave the three closest guessers a prize. The closest got the Kisses, and all three winners got a library coffee cup I made with our new Cricut and Cricut Mug Press. I thought the cup was adorable and, once I got the hang of it, not too difficult to do. I put “Book Lover” on one side of the mug and our logo on the other. They turned out great, and we got a lot of compliments on them. 

The library hadn’t done a guessing game in a while, and this was my first time putting one together. I probably won’t do one every month, but I think this is a fun, special thing to do once in a while. 

Tuesday Tips - A Joke a Day!

Sam Jones is the Youth Services Librarian at the Beaver Dam Public Library. She shares tips to make your job easier in her Tuesday posts.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Last November, I started doing daily jokes for DINOvember. I rolled out our whiteboard that I usually use for storytimes and set it out by my desk. The jokes were all dinosaur themed. I learned pretty quickly that a joke a day was a lot (and there aren't a ton of family-friendly jokes about dinosaurs). About halfway through the month, I decided to do two jokes a week. One on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The other is on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It is also a lot easier to remember what the joke is this way. After November, I put the board away and stopped doing the jokes. 

I wish I would've counted how many people asked what happened to the jokes. It was a lot more than I imagined, so I brought it back this month. I'm still doing two jokes a week and it doesn't feel like it is too much. I'm also planning out a month of jokes in advance, so I don't have to worry about what joke to use the day I need it. 

The great thing about this is that it really doesn't take up a lot of time and it makes people happy. I'm looking for a more permanent place to put the jokes, but it is definitely something I intend to keep on doing. In case you were wondering, this month's theme was winter and our joke for today is:  What kind of fish do penguins catch at night? A starfish.

Program Idea Roundup

Image by Gustavo Pires Bertaco from Pixabay

Yeehaw! It's roundup time! I've been saving some interesting programming-related content for awhile and I want to get it out to you all. Check out these free webinars and blog posts for a ton of ideas for children's, tweens and teens!

WEBINARS

• The Candy Corn Question: Passive Programming That Pulls People In  Wed, Oct 26, 1pm

Libraries that use passive programming appreciate it as an economical, time-efficient way to engage customers. It can also be an inclusive way to show people of all abilities and backgrounds that they belong in the library – and that the library belongs to them. We are living in a time of relearning, re-educating, and reassessing - the perfect time to invite our users to express themselves within our space. Passive programming pundits and authors of "The Passive Programming Playbook: 101 Ways to Get Library Customers Off the Sidelines," Andria L. Amaral and Paula Willey, will talk about passive programming that reaches out. They'll discuss the specific challenges of service to young people, and the delightful solutions each has come up with. You’ll learn how to shoehorn passive programs into the most crowded of library spaces - and even how to use passive programming outside the library to pull people in. Passive programming is an inclusive way to embrace every library user - join us for your booster shot of inspiration.

• How to Promote, Deliver and Evaluate Hybrid Programming in Your Library. Wed, Nov 9, 1pm from the Programming Librarian

Join Jeff Zeh and James Hutter as they discuss the Port Washington Public Library’s efforts to support hybrid programming in their community. They will cover the library’s efforts to establish, promote, and evaluate hybrid programming during the pandemic. Successes and failures met along the way will also be shared. There will be dedicated time for Q&A at the end of this session.

BLOG POSTS

• Strategies to Help Deal with Program Flops (yes, we all have unexpected flops). [When Programs Flop. Sullivan, Jennifer. Adventures in Storytime and Beyond blog. September 25, 2022]

• Monthly Themes for Displays, Decorations and Programs from Gretna NE Library. [2015 Children's Library Themes. McCorkindale, Rebecca. Hafuboti. Hafuboti blog. September 30, 22]

• Teen Programming Ideas Learned From the ARSL Conference [Thoughts After a Conference. Cassandra. Teen Services Underground blog. September 21, 2002]

• STEAM Programs If You're Iffy on Science [STEAM Programs for the Scientifically Uncertain. Roos, Chelsea. ALSC blog. August 17, 2022.]

• Music and Storytime [Music and Storytime Programs. Kopa, Angelique. ALSC blog. August 13, 2022] 

Tuesday Tips - Fun and Free Online Activity

Sam Jones is the Youth Services Librarian at the Beaver Dam Public Library. She shares tips to make your job easier in her Tuesday posts.

Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay

Recently, StickTogether, a company that sells mosaic puzzle posters, announced that their virtual stickerboards will now be completely free to anyone who wants to use them. A week or two ago, my library put a physical stickerboard up, and there was a lot of excitement about it- especially from teens. 

When they announced that the virtual boards were now free, I jumped at the chance to use them. The first board I posted got finished within five hours of posting the link! 

If you're interested in them, here is a link to the company's blog post with instructions on how to create one. Basically, you just have to make a free account and then you can share the link to the design you want. 

Part of the excitement is that users do not know what the design is until the board is done. We will see if they remain popular, but in the meantime, I will continue to make them because they are free, super easy to make, and fun. 

Virtual Variety: Passive Programs (Part 2)

Lindy Liedl from the Rice Lake Public Library returns with her monthly column on all things virtual to help you connect with your patrons!

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay 

Passive programs on your social media are a great way to engage patrons and keep people excited for your next post. These could be shared on whichever social media platform your patrons respond to the most. I mostly share them on our Discord server for teens to keep it active while they’re busy during the summer. (Check my previous post about Discord for libraries!)

For this time, our passive virtual program is Writing Prompts.

You might be surprised how many writers come out of the woodwork when they’re encouraged. Writing prompts can be shared as image posts, a sentence, or a beginning paragraph. If you’re not a writer yourself, like me, some good prompt sources are Pinterest, or doing a Google search for “writing prompt image”, or this handy blog: https://promptuarium.wordpress.com/category/writing-prompt/

First, it might be worth considering whether your patrons need some incentive to respond to prompts. You could offer to repost their writing on your socials, or to display them on wall space in your library–This worked really well for National Poetry Month. We then had a Community Poetry Wall for visitors to view, and all ages got into it!

Instagram writing prompts: Since Instagram stories don’t really allow for long responses, I would share writing prompts as a post and ask patrons to comment. You could invite them to message you instead if they’d rather be anonymous.

Facebook writing prompts: A weekly/monthly post would work well on Facebook too. Invite patrons to respond in the comments, or message you. You could reshare responses once a month too.

Discord writing prompts: Share a prompt image or sentence to a writing channel, and teens can post their responses right there. 

You might have to specify guidelines for the content patrons share if you want them to keep things PG. My teens asked if it was okay to share writing containing swear words, and we decided on using Discord’s censoring feature to block out certain words unless the reader is comfortable viewing them. Other platforms don’t have this tool, so you could state right away that you’d prefer not to receive writing containing profanity, gore, etc. But don’t let this scare you! People are generally respectful knowing that they’re posting to a library space.

Be sure to encourage each person who posts or messages you their writing since it’s a pretty vulnerable thing! Afterall, what’s the point in sharing their writing if they’re going to be ignored? For good measure, I like to point out specific things I like about what our teens share. This gets them even more confident to share again. If you’re really lucky, these passive posts could connect fellow writers and get them chatting together which could develop into a group! But even if not, it’s a really fun way to engage your community online, and to see some hidden talent.

Passive Program Ideas for Teens

Lucas Maxwell photo

In a recent Book Riot post, a teen school librarian shares some easy passive programs that work just as well at a public library. Some would work well for younger kids as well. The author also links up to another post at Programming Librarian blog for even more ideas!

Check out the post here. [Passive Programming in School Libraries. Maxwell, Lucas. Book Riot. June 6, 2022]

Boredom Buster Bags Collaboration Project

The following fun is from the WVLS (WI Valley Library Service) December 2021 newsletter edited by Jamie Matczak.

Contributed photo

Each year, the Colby Community Library sponsors a holiday service project. In 2021, community members and patrons were invited to provide items for “Boredom Buster Bags” for children undergoing medical procedures at local hospitals.

The Friends of the Colby Community Library supplied gift bags for people to take home and fill with new items for children ages 3-11. Suggested items were activity or puzzle books, games, crafts, action figures, dolls, stuffed animals, building block sets, or anything that would fit in the bag and provide entertainment. The Friends purchased new books to insert in each bag. When the bags are returned, library staff and Friends members check each bag to make sure the items are age appropriate and match the bag with a child. 

The first deliveries were made to Marshfield Medical Center and Aspirus Health in Wausau. Medical staff members were elated with the donations. So far, 72 holiday themed bags and 105 year-round bags have been delivered! Another delivery will be made at the end of December.  

Director Vicky Calmes estimates another 150 bags will be collected.

"The Colby community has been SO generous. It is unfortunate that so many bags are needed for children requiring medical care, but it is heartwarming to know patrons and staff can help make their long days more enjoyable,” she said.

For more information on this project, contact Vicky Calmes at director@colbypubliclibrary.org.

Sparking Your Fall Program Fires

A couple of recent blogs posted some fun resources to get your children's programming creativity going:

• Jbrary blog updated an older passive (or self-directed) program post with a lively round of current ideas from colleagues in Canadian libraries. With COVID-19 numbers rising and many libraries going back to virtual and off-line programming, the ideas found here may spark your planning!

• Kim Niesing, Youth Services Consultant at the Monarch Library System shared in her weekly email newsletter a great IA State Library archived webinar featuring Chelsea Price, a small library director sharing great practical ideas on  overcoming program burnout: When Programming Isn't Fun Anymore: Fighting Job Burnout and Relighting Your Programming Fire. Click here to access it.

• Also from Kim's newsletter, is a great piece from the Programming Librarian blog perfect for those doing indoor storytimes with masks. Kim writes:  "...this article gives some tips about how to keep the rich literacy experiences in storytime that could be hindered when your mouth is covered".

• Teen Services Underground shared some teen-planned virtual programs in a recent post.

Get Kids Out and Exploring Wisconsin's Wonderful Natural Resources with the DNR's Wisconsin Explorer Program!

Check out this super fun program from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources! 

"Make tracks to the nearest state park, forest, trail or recreation area and ask for a free Wisconsin Explorer booklet. Inside you'll find nature activities, scavenger hunts, games, hikes and crafts to help you explore Wisconsin's great outdoors together.

Kids who complete the requirements will earn collectible state symbol patches. Don't just sit there - get out and start discovering secrets together!"

Wisconsin Explorer Program

ALL.THE.THINGS. with Jonathan Dolce - May 2021

from May 1 ALSC blog post

Two words: Jonathan. Dolce.

Longtime readers of this blog know that when Jonathan Dolce, an ALSC member/blogger, posts, you will see us re-post here on the YSS blog. His prodigious generosity in sharing tips, links, free resources and humor are second to none in the youth library blogging world.

Sunday May 1 is no exception. In the ALSC blog post Ultimate Summer Reading Programming Guide 2021,  Jonathan shares ideas on programming format options (passive, limited indoor, outdoor, digital and hybrid); ideas for programs; keeping participants COVID safe and then lets loose a flood of free resources.

If you are looking to spark up or jumpstart your thinking as you plan summer (or school year) programming content/formats, you will have a boatload of possibilities to help you!

Thanks again Jonathan!

*NEW* Fostering Readers Resources

At Keeping Up with Kids blog from WI's own IFLS library system comes this blog post describing some great new free and downloadable resources to help you in providing great content and programming for Gr. K-3 kids. This IMLS grant funded project announced that "These resources are designed to help you plan and implement fun research-based literacy programs for children in K-3rd grade who are learning to read."

To read all about these resources which include activities, handouts, videos ideas and the research behind them, click here.

Shark Week at the Library

Looking for a unique way to celebrate all things shark?  Find inspiration from the Henry County (GA) Public Library System and their hilarious and unique promo video prompting patrons to search for hidden sharks in the library stacks.  Check out the video!

Put your best space face forward with the NASA Selfie app!

Y'ALL.  Thanks to a fantastic post on the Teen Services Underground Facebook group, I just learned about an app that's pretty darn perfect for this year's summer theme: NASA Selfies!
                                                   
The app, created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is free and available for both iOS and Android.

The process is simple:

1. Download the app.
2. Take a selfie (or a picture of your pet, another person, what-have-you)
3. Take your face--now placed inside a virtual spacesuit--and decide which Spitzer image you want for a background.

There's currently over 30 different background options--and a random button, if you just can't choose and/or want to be surprised!  The app also includes a bit of information about your selected interstellar background.

How fun would this be for the summer?!  I think patrons of all ages will get a kick out of the chance to send themselves on a galactic adventure, right from their handheld device.

Click HERE to read the official press release.

And, for education purposes (of course) I tried the app a few times myself. *ahem*

Citizen Science Passive Program: Great Backyard Bird Count

If you're looking for a passive program or STEM activity, the Great Backyard Bird Count runs Feb.15-18, 2019. There are beautiful posters already created, you can print lists of the birds in your area code and the site also lists birding apps that can be used for identification purposes. This is a super citizen science activity for out of school learning, homeschoolers, and families to engage in together. Adults may love it, too.

Rock Out Some Recreated Album Covers!

Looking for a fun, SRP-themed program for teens and tweens?  

How about having them recreate famous album covers?!

Check out THIS super sweet blog post by The Lego Librarian for inspiration and then go forth and recreate it at your library!  Just be sure to follow the advice he gives: provide examples of approved album covers, both as a source of inspiration...and to avoid any awkward situations, as some album covers can be a bit...saucy.

What's really great about this idea is how it can be tweaked to best suit your needs/resources.  It could be a one-off program, a summer-long passive program--you could even offer it as a family challenge!

Another way to change it up?  Consider turning it into a craft!  Participants can recreate the covers using any number of materials, including LEGOs or candy! 

(Well, hello there, Skittle-d David Bowie!)

                                      

You Can Do it Too! DIY Ice House!

Our guest post today is by Mary Jo Erickson, Children's Librarian at the Johnson Public Library in Darlington.

My husband, Brent and I created the igloo one cold, snowy January afternoon!  Actually, it only took us 7 hours from start to finish (lots of hot glue!). A co-worker, Kate cut out the adorable bear shaped rug, we added, stuffed animals, blankets, fake trees, lots of books , and  flash lights.

We kept the igloo up the entire month of January.  

I hosted a family Twilight night at the library and we put glow sticks inside as many jugs that we could!  It was awesome!