Looking
for content to put inside “grab-&-go,” "take-&-make” and other activity bags
for kids and families? Thanks to Erin Isabell, Youth Services Manager, Platteville (WI) Public Library who asked the original question on pubyac listserv and of her cohort colleagues from the WI 2019 Youth Services Development Institute, we have the following kit ideas. The ideas have been slightly
edited for brevity.
Recipes
for simple things to make at home- clay, ooze, edible playdough, etc.
Puppets
from bags or paper or socks
Beaded
bracelets
Color
your own bookmark or finger puppet
Simple
paper folding craft
Button
spinners and other old fashioned easy to make toys
Coffee
filter or tissue paper flowers
We have
not reopened yet but all of our in-person programs have been canceled through
the summer. Since we’ll have access to printers again, I’m thinking about
printable activities that we can send them home with. Maybe a community or
nature or book themed bingo sheet. Or a craft from the
CSLP
Pinterest page that
we can have printed on cardstock for them.
We’re
also floating the idea of allowing materials for an activity like making salt
dough to be picked up during a certain time frame. Then we could do a Zoom
meeting to make and share all together or maybe an instructional video on
social media? But we think that raw materials might be cheaper since we’ll now
need to buy plastic baggies!
We
are going to put ziploc bags with a craft, written instructions, and a URL (for
video instructions) and hand these out to patrons that are checking out kids
books. We will have everything prepackaged and ready for those doing the
curbside service. They will just pick 3-4 (depends on #of kids) prepackaged baggies
and put them into the bag with the books.
The
first five weeks of our SRP are going to be “Story a Week” bags with activities
inside based around a story. For example, for “Jack and the
Beanstalk,” we will include the supplies to grow their own bean in a plastic
bag and stick puppets to make at home. We will be asking for
registrations just to get a beginning head count to have (hopefully) enough
bags to begin the program.
Before
our library closed, I went through my filing cabinets where I store leftover
pieces of papercrafts and bagged the pieces with instructions in ziplocs for
patrons to take. When we closed, I took those and more to a local
restaurant that was giving out free lunches to children during the week and
they were able to give out most of them. I kept it as simple as possible,
so that the supplies required would be relatively simple to come by at home --
coloring supplies, glue sticks, scissors, tape. I also grabbed any
"ready made" kits I could find where even these supplies weren't
needed. I also created a pair of activity packs, trying to think of
activities that could be completed by a variety of ages in a variety of home
situations. Many of our simple crafts can be found on
our
library's Pinterest.
Our make and take bags will
be available for pickup with curbside pickup, limiting one per family. We are
using paper lunch bags and providing supplies so one week we give them markers,
stickers, a slap bracelet, straws, cotton balls, beads and make a collage.
Another week I am going to put paint (2 colors) in a small container and
include a marble so they can do marble painting (put dabs of color on paper
inside a box and have the marble roll through it to make art). I was also
thinking using water beads, having them plant grass in a cup so they can cut it
with scissors and such. When we call patrons to set up a time for them
to pick up their books, I will be asking if they would like a craft bag for
themselves or for them to share.
I
found this great
solar
system coloring book and facts book a few months ago when I was doing a big
astronomy themed program.
But I needed to remake it somewhat
in order for it to be easy to print the 100 copies I needed, in the format I
wanted (double-sided and folded in the middle). I cut out each page and put
them together, turned them around, whatever was necessary to make the final
product more book like. Here is
the
finished printable book. Some pages will look upside-down in the PDF --
they're supposed to! Print it out exactly like that and photocopy it
double-sided in your copier's Automatic Document Feeder. Then your pages will
match up properly so you can stack them and fold them and staple them.
We've
been putting together ideas for "brown bag" programs for summer. The
idea is to match up virtual book titles with activities with an easy craft
idea. One idea is to read Paul Galdone’s Little Red Hen through Youtube and
then in the brown bag have a few seeds with a peat pod for kids to grow at
home. We decided on marigolds because they grow fast. We put together a growth
chart - have the kids write or draw the growth they see about every other day,
a sequence story retell, with a some songs. We also will be passing along some
mask ideas for kids to print out and act out the story. We simply are
encouraging exploring Jan Brett's masks for other stories because they are so
cool. Kids might end up exploring her stories too, but you can use one
character from one story to be in another story. It goes with the
"imagine' theme this year and ties in a classic story with stuff we can
give them and things they might have at home (we did get permission). We've also put together other ideas - like stacked structure art
ideas - taking recycled cardboard and stacking it up and make a cool sculpture
out of it. It's a matter of taking what you might do in-house and simplifying. What can they use at home and what can you give them with
instructions? With this, we're giving them some clay to anchor a chopstick to
kind of thread the cardboard on. In the instructions there are ideas of things
to look for around the house to use, along with step by step.
Have
fun!
My
library, though closed to the public, has continued to have rotating staff in
the building with ongoing curbside pick-ups with flexible return dates.
In addition, our Children's Department staff have done several "passive
crafts" or bagged activities that families can drive up and take home (one
per child). We have done some passive take-home activities/crafts during
our regular operating days, so this was an extension of that and seemed to make
sense for our community (where a lot of families are impacted by the 'digital
divide'). When we do a take-home activity, we literally put them in
labeled brown lunch bags, and include all of the materials that a child will
need to complete the task (with an exception for something like a pair of
scissors). We basically let our supplies dictate our bags. We had a bunch
of yarn, and I do a lot of science at my library, so thus far during Covid19,
we have prepared the following take-homes for our families:
Our families have been incredibly appreciative, and the bags go
like hot cakes! (We usually do about 30 or so in a batch).
We
are going to have kits for them to come pick up before the program that have
everything that they will need, then do everything together on Zoom. The goal
is to make it as much of a normal program as possible with icebreakers (Harry
Potter and Disney Would You Rather!), Madlibs, or a book reading for older
kids. Each of our branches will be doing one specific program three times a
week to include as many as possible. Since we are doing Zoom, we are able to
accommodate more participants, so that's one bright side!
Virtual & Offline Programming YSS blog COVID-19 series:
