Jbrary Talks STEM Toys and Games

Recently Lindsey Krabbenhoft at Jbrary shared her list of STEM toys and games that she uses at her library. The post was based on an article she wrote for YACCING Magazine, part of the British Columbia Library Association's Young and Adult and Children's Section.

Lindsey is thinking three main access points at the library:

• Drop-in Use – available in your public space any time
• Programming – for use with small or large groups with mediation by library staff
• Lendable Kits – to be checked out and used at home with caregivers

In this post she concentrates on toys and games you can consider lending at your library. The post contains some great ideas and, in the comments section for the post, youth librarians are adding their favorite library-friendly STEM recommendations.

Please click here to read the post (and share ideas at Jbrary about your successful STEM games and toys for library use. [STEM Toys and Games at the Library. Krabbenhoft, Lindsey. Jbrary. September 2, 2024.

Throw-It Thursday - Dismantling is Better than Weeding

Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library, is back with another weeding tips column. 

Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay

Kits are sometimes the bane of my existence. Don’t get me wrong. I love that we have kits and the people love to use them. We have kits for kids that include books, movies, and games. We have memory kits for adults with books, puzzles, music and more. Patrons love the ease of grabbing a kit and having multiple things to entertain or teach with. 

However, sometimes pieces go missing. Sometimes, the pieces that go missing can’t be replaced. So, what do you do with the kit? Do you find something to replace the missing item and have someone fix the cataloging record? What if there are multiple items on a record? You can’t change the record description if other libraries also have those items. It can become messy and expensive to “fix” a kit. But sometimes you don’t want to weed a kit because there are still some useful items in it.

The solution is simple. If you can’t find pieces or items to replace what is missing, “discard” the kit from the system, and re-catalog individual items. 

If you don’t have a game or puzzle collection, you could always use those items in activities or programs, or just leave them sit out for patrons to use in the library. We recently had an oversize kit in our children’s area that we dismantled because the bag fell apart, and we couldn’t find anything decent to replace it with. One of the items in the kit was a fantasy castle playset, which is not something we would circulate on its own, but we were happy to pull it out and leave it sit out for kids to play with. 

So, before you get too frustrated with a kit that is constantly missing pieces, or has seen better days, think about what else you could do with it and turn it into something “new”.

Fun Fridays - Lego Challenges to Go!

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 Francis Ray from Pixabay

Happy Friday! 

Here is a great program if you are short on space and/or staff time.  LEGO Challenges to GO! 

While I love a good LEGO club, our community room is often booked, and there’s also only so much time in a day.  Enter LEGO Challenges to GO!  This is a program that came out of the pandemic but is still a crowd pleaser.  Due to very generous donations, we have a massive amount of LEGOs and Duplos.   

For the challenges, we take sandwich bags and fill them with LEGOs.  Next, we create a check-out sheet for challenge day (because our library has made the choice not to catalog and barcode all the bags).  Information that we require includes name and contact information.  We also take library card number if the patron has a library account.  

On LEGO Challenge Day, patrons come and check out a bag of LEGOs or Duplos and they are given a challenge (everyone is given the same challenge…such as build a time machine, build a tool that cleans ocean pollution, etc.).   

The patron takes their bag of LEGOs and returns their finished creation within a week (and any leftover pieces that they didn’t want to use) and we put the creation on display in the library until the next challenge date.  We have had great success with the LEGOs coming back.  We check off patrons as they return their creations. 

Again, this is a great program if you don’t have the space to run a LEGO club or if you don’t have the staff or staff time to run the program.  Patrons still enjoy the challenge and love to put their creations on display.