Doing a lot with a little

Our library system gives each library a fixed amount of money for programming each year. I have had a lot of programs this year and found myself last month with four months to go in the year and about $200 left to spend. Some might think that was a lot but with storytimes, a teen anime club, a gaming club, after school club, teen programs, crafts, book clubs etc. that money goes fast.

I have been getting big crowds at my storytime this session. At each storytime I have a craft relating to the theme. So I have had to had to come up with crafts for 30 something kids each time for 8 weeks with practically no money. I am on the sixth week and I have successfully done it, with only spending about $20. I think that deserves an award or something. I can't even go to the grocery store to buy milk and get out spending less than $20.

The reason I'm able to do this so cheaply is simple. Preschoolers are very easy to please. You basically need paper and glue and they are happy as clams. The picture above is our last craft, a paper bear with some buttons on it I found in the back and clothes pins on the back (which are $1.50 for 50) to make the bear stand. Now if only I could entertain the teens with simple paper and glue...

Sharks and Minnows

I've learned with kids under the age of 8 you can't go wrong with pirates, (the kind with parrots on their shoulders, not the Somali kind.) This week I turned my pirate party I had in June (see June 2010) into an after school activity aimed at elementary aged. I did not have a pirate storyteller but instead included several pirate/aquatic-themed games.

One game we played was the classic "Sharks and Minnows." In this game one child is chosen as a shark and stands in the center of the room. The rest of the children are minnows and must cross to the other side of the room without being tagged by the shark. If the shark tags a minnow, that minnow becomes a shark. You play until there is one lone minnow left. I have a fairly large auditorium so I thought this game would be fun. We had about a dozen kids playing, ranging from 4-10.

Things were going fun until there were two minnows left, one tiny girl that can't have been older than five and one boy not much older than that. They were faced by ten exciting, shouting, and eager sharks. When I said "go" for the minnows to cross over to the other side, it was kind of like those nature shows where hyenas descend on a gazelle. Ten older kids jumped on these two little kids, saying "we got you", pushing them and herding them to the other side of the room. I was fearful one of them got hurt since the older kids were so excited. Fortunately no one was but I decided we were done with "Sharks and Minnows." After that we stuck to a game like Hot Potato, where it was less likely one could get run over.

Pick up the Buckets!

In some anime school dramas when a character misbehaves in school they are forced to hold up water filled buckets as punishment. Up until the 1970s teachers in Japan would discipline their students this way and it made its way into popular culture. The water bucket punishment is the equivalent to the "dunce cap" in Western cartoons.

I had my first anime club meeting this week and since my anime teens are very loud and crazy I thought a way to discipline them would be to use the bucket punishment. I brought two small buckets and filled them up with water and informed them (in a kindly manner) all at the beginning if there was misbehavior someone would have to hold the buckets. The teens thought this was very funny and immediately started competing to hold the buckets. Soon however, the girls found out the buckets were very tiring to hold and stopped but a couple of boys kept at it presumably to impress the ladies.

I only ended up using the buckets as punishment once when a girl did not get off our auditoriums piano... a big no no. I told her "pick up the buckets!" Then all the other teens picked up the chorus: "pick up the buckets!" She dutifully complied. I don't know if the water buckets had the intended effect I was looking for but they did provide some amusement.

I had a school group come in last week and I read them this book: Furious George goes Bananas by Michael Rex. It's a parody of Curious George where the "man in the hat" tortures George and makes him do all sorts of things for money. At the end of the book George throws the man into a space shuttle, jumps on the back of it and then as it blasts into space the ape parachutes down gently into the jungle. When I completed the book, one six year old girl earnestly said: "I don't think that parachute is big enough for George."

When she said that I thought to myself: So George building a skyscraper, performing on Broadway, outwitting the man in the hat and blasting off into space on the back of a shuttle didn't bother you...but the parachute..that was what did it. Sometimes the things kids say...

No Appreciation

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been taking a well-earned vacation.

This week I had a sand art activity. I ordered a sand art kit that had 50 bottles for the kids to make their own sand art bottle. I also had enough sand for them to make their own sand art picture with colored sand, markers and glue. I assumed that 50 bottles would be enough. Why would more than 50 kids descend on the library on a Thursday afternoon? Well, I was wrong. We were swamped. I ran out of bottles. I felt SO bad but how was I to expect so many. The last activity I had there were 30-something kids.

Most of the mothers were fine and gracious and happy doing the second sand art craft...except for one mom. I personally apologized to this mother and invited her to do the second craft. She refused and instead decided to rant to the reference desk about their not being enough bottles. Now I understand that if I made her pay a dollar for the bottle and it not be there for her to be that upset. But to complain about a FREE activity where she showed up 20 minutes late to I thought was unfair. How about a thank you for spending the money and time for having the activity at all?

Stealing from the Library

There is a DVD thief rampant in our library. We always have DVDs stolen but over the last couple of weeks there have been dozens taken from under our nose. We have suspicions but no suspects and so we have adjusted our security cameras to see if we can catch the culprits.

All libraries have thieves. There is not one branch that hasn't struggled with how to secure their property. I was having a conversation the other day about exactly WHY this happens. I think it's due to people's mindset about libraries. I think the people who will steal a dozen DVDs from a library would not even consider stealing them from Blockbuster. To them, stealing from a library is not really stealing because everything in the library is free. They are essentially permanently "borrowing" them.

I personally think stealing from a library is 10x worse than stealing from a Blockbuster. When you steal from a video store you are stealing from a massive corporation. When you steal from a library you steal from your neighbors who contributed the taxes to pay for that library. Everyone gets hurt when you steal from a library. I wish people could understand this, then we would have fewer thefts.

Pirate Party!

A couple of days ago I had a "Pirate Party" to celebrate our Summer Reading Program's theme of "Make a Splash" at your library. Kids love pirates, of course their idea of pirates are the Pirates of the Caribbean type not the Somali type but nonetheless they love them. I had a whole passel of kids, mostly boys out to the library and I had pirate names for each of them on name tags. I found a pirate name generator to come up with the names but I had to edit them because many of the pirate names it came up with were naughty like "Bessie Slovenly Wench."

First we had a pirate storyteller come out, Pamela Hanks, you can find her at this site. She dressed in full pirate regalia and had the pirate "accent" down.

Then we divided the group in half and half went on a treasure hunt around the library and the other half made pirate crafts. I made six different treasure hunts around the library leading the kids from clue to clue until they got a word which they would take to the Reference desk to get a bag full of goodies. Of course this led to kids running around yelling "there's the next clue!" and dragging their parents along. Devising 6 separate hunts with 9 different clues was quite a task and I don't plan on doing a treasure hunt again in the near future. The party was fun but I think this "Admiral Slovenly Wench" is going to take a break for a bit.

Bawling Babies

The library is supposed to be a quiet, serene, place. Not so. A day does not pass in my library where one child does not sit down in the middle of the floor and start screaming its head off. The screams of these children and babies are more than fits they are temper tantrums, angry bawlings and yellings that always happen to take place right in the middle of the library. This week I was sitting back in the staff room, far away from the main floor when I heard a piercing scream from behind the door. It sounded as if a tiger was mauling a young child. The screaming continued, increasing in intensity. Upon further questioning from my coworkers the incident started because a marker was taken away from this one toddler.

I understand that children and babies cry. It's in their nature. What I do not have tolerance for is their parents who sit with them for several minutes while they cry and cry trying to soothe them. It is clearly obvious to the dozens of people in the library that the parents soothing does not help the child as the screams become ever piercing. But the parent does not seem to understand this and thinks that if they just say the "right" words their child will turn into an angel again. What I want parents to do is as soon as their child starts screaming to take them OUTSIDE the library and then calm them down. It will make the library experience better for everyone. I wish I could make a sign that says this and every time a child starts screaming I could just point to it and motion to the door.