Summer Reading Maker's Lab report

This summer we have been transforming the children’s study area at my library into a “Maker’s Lab” every Thursday afternoon. We have been working on craft projects appropriate for school-age children and tweens. Here's a sampling of a few of my favorites.

Everyone’s creativity was on display using rainbow scratchy paper.

Make-a-Minion craft, featuring the popular inventors from the movie Despicable Me.

One of my favorites was this lightning bug craft, that really glows-in-the-dark. 

I hosted a "Sidewalk Chalk Expo" Plenty of kids and parents showed up to take advantage of the shade during a hot sunny day. 

Just moments after our sidewalk masterpieces were complete, we felt the first raindrops… ah, so long, sidewalk chalk art! The art may not have lasted long, but the children made new friends and memories that will last a lifetime.

Recycled book crafts

I love altered book projects. There are so many that are pretty and inspiring. 

I'd love to do a craft project for teens at my library using some discarded/damaged books to make something like these, but I don't know if members of the public would have the heart for it. So many people hate to see a book "defaced" or feel guilty for reusing or recycling a book in any way.

Have you ever done a recycled book project? How did it go?

Cat in the Hat storytime

We just finished a great Cat in the Hat program to celebrate Dr. Seuss's 110th birthday!

Here's talented performer, Reuben Haller, as the Cat in the Hat, with some audience volunteers as Thing 1 and Thing 2. The kids went crazy for his balancing act, his "Thingcatcher" net and clowning antics. What fun!

Dream Big Bookmarks

I was inspired by this craft project. What a simple and appealing idea! Take a paint chip, stamp it, add some pretty ribbon, and voila, bookmark!
I decided to go with a blue-toned paint chip to keep with this summer's theme of "Dream Big, Read." I got the stamps from a dollar sale bin at the local craft supply store. Lucky for me, clouds, moons, stars and inspirational sayings like, "Dream" or "Imagine" seem to be all the rage for scrapbookers. I'm really pleased with the results, and plan on doing a craft program with these at my library.

My Father's Dragon Book Club

Normally, I like to recount my successes here on the blog, but sometimes, honesty is best, too. I've been running a book club for 8-12 year olds at my library and attendance has been low(ish) but not abysmal. It's definitely not an easy sell, not like adding another baby or toddler storytime, which would fill up in no time, that's for sure. I have about a half-dozen kids who've been showing up on a somewhat regular basis. Generally, we read a book, and do a craft while we have a light-hearted, informal, no-quizzes-later, kind of chat about the book. Our Diary of a Wimpy Kid book club meeting last month probably drew the largest crowd yet. I've been hosting them on the first Friday of the month in the late afternoons - mainly because there's been a lot of requests for activities that aren't in the middle of the week. It's the beginning of the weekend, and "First Friday" is alliterative, and relatively easy to remember. A lot of the kids are pretty engaged, but with their busy schedules, they are a bit burnt-out on anything too "schoolish" so I really make an effort to keep things fun and low-pressure.


When I was planning our line-up of book club meetings, like, 6 months ago, I completely forgot that the first Friday in March would be Dr. Seuss's birthday. I planned for us to read My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett and make a dragon paper bag puppet. Voila!

Gorgeous, right? I got the pattern from www.abcteach.com. They have a number of resources for free, or for $39.99 (less with a group membership!) you get access to all of their crafts and activities - well worth it, in my opinion. Their cute craft ideas are such a timesaver.


The original pattern has a strange-looking belly for the dragon, but I nixed that in favor of the striped construction-paper belly I gave him.


Sadly, my book club were no-shows! Why? Well, I think they simply had too many other competing activities yesterday, probably mostly having to do with the Seuss-sanity that's been brewing all this week. (Seuss-sanity, is that a word? It is now.) I did manage to press a few dragon-templates into the hands of kids at the branch who hadn't read the book, but might enjoy the craft anyway. Honestly, I think the low-attendance for this program had more to do with timing, than anything else. I'll definitely have to try to resurrect this program at some future (more auspicious) date.

Free Astronomy Programs

We had an amazing free program at our library last week. The Atlanta Astronomy Club sent volunteers to give a talk about the moon, and then another talk about comets and asteroids. Art Zorka, who was the main presenter, has a very laid back style and was able to put complex astronomy in terms that even the youngest audience members could understand. He brought a collection of rocks - some of them meteors, some of them ordinary rocks you might find in your yard and had everyone try to guess which was which. We had a great crowd and the speakers were terrific. They're affiliated with NASA's Night Sky Network; I've been lucky to be able to set up programs like this in several states, and I don't think I've ever really been disappointed. 


In Texas, I had author Jane Ann Peddicord come and read from her book Night Wonders. She asked for volunteers from the audience to demonstrate the motion of the planets around the sun, using hula-hoops. Brilliantly, she had the kids in the audience "twinkle" by waving their hands. When I was visiting friends in Baltimore, I had the chance to go to an astronomy program where the presenters brought a giant tarp printed with a photo of the sun and invited children to hop up and down as if they were sunspots. They also brought a telescope with specially darkened lenses so you could look directly at the sun. When I was in Los Angeles, I had a group bring in multiple telescopes to compare and contrast what each one does, as well as a felt board story illustrating the phases of the moon. Don't overlook this great opportunity for a free program at your library: if you're interested in having some local, amateur astronomers give a presentation go to Night Sky Network's website and check out your local chapter.

Summer Reading wrap-up

What a busy summer - I can't believe Summer Reading Club is over for the year. It was certainly a challenge... my first year at my current library, with a programming and prizes budget reduced to nearly zero, and very little time to plan. I think it went as well as could be expected. I managed to scare up some local performers who were willing to put on programs for free, and ransacked our supply closets for craft supplies that I could repurpose. Most of our summer reading program was accomplished through sheer ingenuity. You know that old saying, you can have things fast, or have them cheap or have them excellent, but you can only pick two out of the three. I opted for excellent, thrifty, yet time and labor intensive programs. Here are just a few highlights.


The Summer Reading theme this year was One World, Many Stories, and I started by making a Passport Craft for kids. I had planned to do a Mexican Paper Flower Making craft, using up the last of our tissue paper and chenille stems, but was stymied by much larger and younger crowd than I expected. The planned craft proved too difficult for most of the 3 and 4 year-olds who showed up, so I pulled out my "emergency kit" containing some coloring pages, and a simple caterpillar craft, where kids simply had to glue a precut caterpillar and leaf onto a floral scene.

Mostly, I stuck to affordable fun - the Sidewalk Chalk Art Expo that we hosted at the library was very successful. Patch.com even covered it in their local news. We also hosted a well-attended Spelling Bee. The toughest part was coming up with lists of words, and deciding their difficulty beforehand.

Here's a picture from the International Apple Craft we did. I read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, and then invited kids to make their own apple faces, Mr. Potato-Head style, using red plates as our background.


A huge part of summer reading was managing people's expectations. A lot of parents (and kids) were bitterly disappointed at the paucity of prizes this year. I guess in years past, there was much better summer reading swag to be had. This year all I had were summer reading folders, bookmarks and a few stickers. I had some very uncomfortable conversations with folks who wanted to explain to the "new girl" that this isn't how Summer Reading Club is supposed to work. They did the reading, so where's the prize? I got through it by playing dumb, and remaining cheerfully psyched about Summer Reading. "Reading is the prize!" I informed them, and then might tell them how excited we were to have them sign up, how much Summer Reading helps kids with school success in the fall, so they don't have that summer gap, and then would solicitously inquire if they had gotten the free bookmark they were entitled to.


In years past, I've used a couple of complicated systems for tracking how much kids have read over the summer - including counting minutes read, pages read, or my personal favorite, pounds of books read. Kids loved "weighing in" their weekly reads on a kitchen scale. This year, I kept things simple, simple, simple. Just write down 10 books read on one's summer reading log, and you're entered in the grand prize drawing. We handled it on an honor system, since I didn't have the time or energy to play policeman. I did double-check all the drawing slips before I handed them in to the Central Library, and did find several duplicates. I'm going to be big-hearted and assume that those who entered multiple times, must have done it by accident. I went ahead and made sure we only had one entry per child.


Ultimately, I was really satisfied with our turnout. We had some respectable numbers, especially considering there hadn't been a children's librarian in the branch for so long, and so many families had started going to other branches in the interim. If I'm able to get similar size crowds next year, I'll be very happy. It's a comfortable number: busy enough to keep you on your toes, but with room to grow. Viva Summer Reading!

Passport Craft

I had fun creating this passport themed craft for our summer reading program. The kids really enjoyed it. I made photocopies from one of the pages of clip art included in our Collaborative Summer Reading Program binder to use as inspiration images on the covers. The cover is simply blue paper folded in quarters. Most of the kids needed help with the hole-puncher - luckily I had plenty of parents and teen volunteers to help me out in that regard. I suppose yarn would have been easier to tie, but I had this ribbon left-over, so decided to use that up. For an added touch of authenticity, I printed up some pages for the middle of the passports with watermarked graphics from the summer reading theme of "One World, Many Stories" -- I was able to use the few pages I had left over as scrap paper for the library. I encouraged participants to get creative and design the cover of their passports however they liked. To finish up, we brought out some stamps and stamped the passports to represent all the countries we'd like to go to one day.

Star Wars Yoga

Am I totally crazy, or would this make an AWESOME Teen Program? Somebody should book this guy immediately.

Holiday Dove Craft

One of my colleagues created this wonderful dove pattern, cut out of a single paper plate. I hosted an after school craft program at our library last week, and here are the results.

Here's the sample that I made. It turned out so nice, I used it as a tree-topper.

And a close-up of the sample.

Here's one made by a seven year old. She decided to give her dove a pink scarf.

And this one, made by a three year old. I think it's cute!

Happy Holidays!