Creativity and relevance are key when creating tween programming. There are a lot of great programming ideas already circulating: Mang...
Looking for a fun, simple program to draw in a crowd of tweens? Look no further than this amazing program that my creative coworker Cathy Terefenko dreamed up! Tweens are presented with real Guinne…
Use this list of fun tween activities ideas, and after school activities for tweens to keep your kids entertained and smiling.
The escape room that we made last year was so much fun that I knew that we had to do it again. But we can’t just do the same one, that would be boring and kids would already know most of the…
Teen librarian Karen Jensen also shares where she gets her tween and teen craft ideas for programming in part 2 of this discussion
The Library Adventure uses affiliate links, see our policies for more information.Kids ages 8 to 12 are often too busy with scheduled activities of their own to make it to library programs in the afternoons or evenings. For librarians who wish to increase attendance at programs for this age group, this can be very frustrating, […]
Classic pastimes and modern day hobbies and projects for teens and tweens in self-isolation.
I am back with another awesome, school-age program that I wish I could take credit for, but the real masterminds behind this fabulousness are my coworkers, Dori and Heather. The basic gist of this …
An exciting virtual or in-person program, Tangram Puzzles only require a few supplies and get kids thinking outside the box to be creative!
Story Crafternoon is a program our library offers to elementary aged kids, who have gotten too old for our preschool story time. This progr...
So this is a summer program we’ve been hosting for 5 years now. I’ve always saved this one for the week of 4th of July–the idea being I don’t put too much work into this on…
IT’S ALIVE!! Not sure what inspired this idea to begin with, but this is a program I wanted to do for awhile. This one can be a little daunting though, since there is the possibility of som…
Emoji Day lands right on July 17th, so it’s a perfect summer reading program event. Not really sure why emojis need their own day, but it’s a great way to get tweens and teens into the…
It took awhile to come up with a good idea for the 2018 SRP theme of “Libraries Rock,” but I came up with one that’s really simple and creative. Our tweens and teens took parody …
Sharing mythology and culture from around the world, this Mythology for Middle School kids was very popular!
I've compiled all the Book Club Ideas for Tweens that you'll need to get started with a Tween Book Club of your own. Book recommendations, Tips and Tricks for good discussions, and more! When I
Our Tweens this week learned about the art of Tangling. It’s a form of drawing or doodling that uses patterns. Its supposed to create a Zen like feeling in the person, while they create these…
Teen and Tween Programs for November 2015
Explore Bobbi Newman's 2158 photos on Flickr!
Fun things for tweens to do on summer vacation or whenever they have some downtime to fill - on their own, with friends or as a family.
Typesy is an amazing homeschool typing program. Not only do kids get excellent instruction in touch typing, but they also get to play fun games to cement the skills!
Creative library program ideas for kids, tweens, teens, and adults. Free resources included!
Emoji Day lands right on July 17th, so it’s a perfect summer reading program event. Not really sure why emojis need their own day, but it’s a great way to get tweens and teens into the…
Everyone wants to be a spy, so Miss Gloria and I did a program a few years back where are kids could learn how to become a secret agent. It was a lot of fun and pretty low cost. We started by havi…
One of our easiest and most useful initiatives is our Celebrate A Grade initiative. We’ve run it for the past three school years and it has lots of applications. Every month celebrates a specific grade. We begin in October with kindergarten. When kids in each grade come up to the desk and tell us their teacher... Read more »
Teen and Tween House Points Program
Just like Lindsey from Jbrary, I help run the Tween Book Club here at the library with a coworker. And, just like she posted on different corresponding activities she does with her books, I thought I'd share what I've done with mine! Our book club is targeted at kids in grades 5 - 8 and is held at the library once a month. Our basic format includes a little video to start—such as the book trailer or an author interview—to act as an ice breaker, and then the book discussion with various questions we've researched or written ourselves. But the best part? Snacks and activities! Let's be honest, it's usually those two elements that get our kids excited about the program... Since there's two of us running the club, we usually have two activities to go with each book that the kids can choose between (or do both). So here are the books we've done and the activities/snacks planned for after the book discussion... The Unwanteds Lisa McMann When Alex finds out he is Unwanted, he expects to die. That is the way of the people of Quill. It’s hard for Alex to leave behind his twin, Aaron, a Wanted, but he makes peace with his fate—until he discovers that instead of a “death farm,” what awaits him is a magical place called Artimé. There, Alex and his fellow Unwanteds are encouraged to cultivate their creative abilities and use them magically. But it’s a rare, unique occurrence for twins to be divided between Wanted and Unwanted, and as Alex and Aaron’s bond stretches across their separation, a threat arises for the survival of Artimé that will pit brother against brother in an ultimate magical battle. This book provides all sorts of ideas for fun activities, since it's all about exercising creativity. For our two activities, we first learned how to make origami dragons (much like what you see on the cover) with this tutorial. While a bit challenging, that also made it more fun. Secondly, we had fun designing/drawing/coloring our own Artime creatures. In the book, creatures in Artime include animals like rabbitkeys (half rabbit, half monkey), girrinos (giraffe and rhino), and squirrelicorns (squirrel and unicorn). So the kids chose two of their favorite animals and combined them, giving them fun names. For a snack, we let them make their own creations out of some basic foods like graham crackers, icing, and candies. Etiquette & Espionage Gail Carrier Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but the also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage—in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education. We got to be all sorts of fancy with this book! We pulled out the fine china (well, we Goodwill-ed some tea cups) and had a dastardly tea party. With our tea and cakes, we went over some of the finer aspects of table manners and tea practices. Those who were willing even practiced the proper curtsy (or bow). But after the etiquette, it was time for some espionage. This included archery training (with a toy bow & arrow) and making a secret-code-making cipher disk—a tutorial and printable materials conveniently provided by the National Security Agency! Three Times Lucky Sheila Turnage Rising sixth grader Miss Moses LoBeau lives in the small town of Tupelo Landing, NC, where everyone's business is fair game and no secret is sacred. She washed ashore in a hurricane eleven years ago, and she's been making waves ever since. Although Mo hopes someday to find her "upstream mother," she's found a home with the Colonel—a café owner with a forgotten past of his own—and Miss Lana, the fabulous café hostess. She will protect those she loves with every bit of her strong will and tough attitude. So when a lawman comes to town asking about a murder, Mo and her best friend, Dale Earnhardt Johnson III, set out to uncover the truth in hopes of saving the only family Mo has ever known. Since a café plays a starring role in this book, it was pretty easy to pick some snacks. Miss Moses LoBeau loves to make peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the café, so that was our star attraction. Our first activity, actually, involved the kids dreaming up their own idea café menu, which they wrote up in chalk (complete with prices!) on some black butcher paper we hung up. Then, because the plot is centered on a murder mystery, we played Mafia (here's Wikipedia's instructions on how to play). The Last Dragonslayer Jasper Fforde In the good old days, magic was indispensable. But now magic is fading: Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell, and magic carpets are used for pizza delivery. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for magicians—but it’s hard to stay in business when magic is drying up. And then the visions start, predicting the death of the world’s last dragon at the hands of an unnamed Dragonslayer. If the visions are true, everything will change for Kazam—and for Jennifer. What good is a dragonslayer without a dragon-slaying sword? All the kids made their own newspaper sword, thanks to this tutorial. And, because a lot of the book does deal with running a business and competing with a rather monopolistic company, we played Monopoly Deal Card Game. Which definitely moves a LOT faster than the board game. There were some kids that weren't up for learning a new game, but they enjoyed sword fighting immensely. As for snacks, we enjoyed "fizzy pop" and "yummy flakes"—soda and Chex Mix—since they make a key appearance in the book. Roller Girl Victoria Jamieson For most of her twelve years, Astrid has done everything with her best friend Nicole. But after Astrid falls in love with roller derby and signs up for derby camp, Nicole decides to go to dance camp instead. And so begins the most difficult summer of Astrid's life as she struggles to keep up with the older girls at camp, hang on to the friend she feels slipping away, and cautiously embark on a new friendship. As the end of summer nears and her first roller derby bout (and junior high!) draws closer, Astrid realizes that maybe she is strong enough to handle the bout, a lost friendship, and middle school…in short, strong enough to be a roller girl. This book was a given for us! One of the library assistants at my branch happens to be on a derby team. Working with her, we were able to get some team members to come in and talk about roller derby. They wore their uniforms, had some videos of their bouts, and answered all sorts of questions. For the activity, the team actually put the kids through a bout warm-up (stretches and ladder runs included). We also let the kids each design their own derby persona, coming up with a good nickname and costume. Snacks included what the team ate themselves before a bout—protein snacks like trail mix and chocolate milk. The Rithmatistby Brandon Sanderson More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings, and are humanity's only defense against the Wild Chalklings. But as the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students learn the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing—kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood. Assigned to help the professor who is investigating the crimes, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves on the trail of an unexpected discovery, one that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever. A whole book about drawing with chalk pretty much goes without saying that chalk will be involved in the activities. In this case, we let the kids create and draw their own ideal Chalking. For a bit more fun, we tried making a simple electromagnetic train. Granted, this steampunk book didn't exactly work off of electromagnetism, but they did get around on a spring-loaded train. Turns out, it was a bit harder than we thought, because your coil tube has to be pretty uniform and straight. Either way, we snacked on ice cream, so that made everything better. So that's what we've done! Any videos that we watched as ice breakers were pretty easy to find through a search on Youtube or the publisher's site. Discussion questions were plentiful, as well, with some help from a Google search and our own brains. The activity has been a lot of fun and we have some dedicated attendees. I recommend trying it out!
Are you hoping to set up a buddy mentor program at your school but don’t know where to start? Here are some things to consider! Which grade levels will you include in the program? Are you pai…
STEM Engineering Challenges and Ideas for the Elementary and Middle School Classroom | Check Out Photos and Ideas to grow your classroom with STEM
Use this list of fun tween activities ideas, and after school activities for tweens to keep your kids entertained and smiling.
Toy sleepovers are a really fun and cheap program to have at the library. Libraries have been doing them for a while now, but if you’re like me (and I know I am), you’re starting to ru…
Looking for summer activities for teens? It can be hard, because you want to keep your teenagers busy but "fun summer activities" looks different for teenagers.
When it comes to summer programming, I like to try to strike a balance between featured performers, exciting standalone programs, special events (like after-hours forts or a movie matinee), and chill, laid-back options. Funnily enough, it's the chill, laid-back programs that tend to require the most thought on my part--I want to choose a topic that will be interesting enough to get people into the library, but that's also something they can generally do on their own with supervision from me. For June, I settled on an origami program. Here's what we did: Origami Hour Supplies: origami paper printer paper in different colors all the origami books in the branch (736.982) print-outs of a few easy origami creations, which I got from origami-fun.com plenty of table space scissors, tape, and crayons (I realize that traditional origami doesn't use these tools, but who am I to stifle creative juices when they start flowing?) Setup: I did not require registration for this program, so I only had a rough estimate of how many people would show up. I opened the doors right on the top of the hour, and a steady stream of kids came in. I shared some basic information--what is origami; I asked who had ever done origami--before explaining that the print-outs and books were there for instruction, and that kids could create as much of whatever they wanted. I emphasized that I would be circulating around the room to see if anyone needed assistance, and then I let kids go to it. As I talked to the 40-ish attendees, I found out that about two-thirds had see the program on our events calendar and come to the library specifically for origami. The other third were already in the library for other reasons when the program began, so they came to check it out. That's the exact type of scenario I want to promote for library programs, especially the chill ones: everyone can come and enjoy an activity regardless of whether it was on their daily schedule or not. Kids eager to slightly detour their library activities to take in a low-key program signals successful implementation. The Creations: I told attendees that they were welcome to take home anything they created, but if they wanted to leave anything at the library, I would display them in the display cases we usually reserve for our Lego Club creations. By the end of the program, I had a basket full of origami creations to display--creations that really ran the gamut from traditional (swans) to timely (Origami Yoda & Darth Paper). Take a look for yourself to see some of the excellent origami work.
On Tuesdays, I get to spend time with my regular teens. As I walked over to the teen department, I stumbled into an interesting discussion. In the midst of homework and computer games, my teens discussed the library. One mentioned that she started to come to the library regularly when she was a tween. She appreciated that the library had a variety of materials for her to checkout. Another teen talked about how awesome the programming was and how much she appreciated the staff. One of our newest teens surprised me the most. She just moved to my library from out of state and shared her own experience. After she agreed with the previous comments, she shared that her previous library only offered duct tape crafts, book discussions, and anime nights for teens. She felt like the programs were okay, but the library wasn’t in tune with her and peer’s needs....
On why starting a Dungeons & Dragons club in your library is a great way to bring in new faces and have a lot of fun in the process.
A fun passive activity for after-school kids can be learning beginner facts about Braille and create a bookmark with their name in Braille.
Green Screen technology (or Chroma Key as it is known in more “techy” circles), used to be so complicated! I first tried the available technology with my fourth grade students about 20+ years ago. This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. I remember setting up green bulletin board
These teen party games are off. the. hook! Pick a few to create an engaging and memorable party teenager guests will be talking about for months.
In today's blog post, I will be sharing with you the exact steps my 10-year-old daughter took to make a vision board for tweens.
Teacher friends, As you know the end of the year is slowly but surely approaching. You and your students could not be MORE READY! Real learning does not have to go out the window just yet, you just have to mask it such a way where it doesn’t quite seem like learning to students… but it in fact, still
Use this list of fun tween activities ideas, and after school activities for tweens to keep your kids entertained and smiling.
