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, […]
Three Rivers Public Library TEEN ADVISORY BOARD WHO ARE WE? The Teen Advisory Board is a group of teens, ages 12-17, from the city of Three Rivers and surrounding communities served by the TRPL wh…
In my first few months at my current job, I visited every member library to get a feel about how they serve their particular community. I found that every library is doing great things to respond to their community needs. With winter reading on my mind, I was enamored by this teen passive program I had never seen before at Forest Grove Library! Amy Gregory is an Adult Services Librarian in Forest Grove who also focuses on teen services. I asked if she would share her process of creating this awesome teen passive program at her library so others might as well. She even added her own GIFs! Take it away, Amy: I became the teen librarian less than a year ago at the Forest Grove City Library. We have a dedicated physical space for our teens, but they are rarely in the library and we have very little teen participation. Over the year I have been here, I have been trying to find ways to attract teens into the library and encourage participation. My latest attempt to bring the teens into the library is to offer teens a chance to win lots of books and get candy. I have come to realize that teens are motivated by the possibility of winning really big prizes and instant gratification. As such I am giving them the opportunity to win 15-20 free books (big prize to aspire to) and get a piece of candy each time they participate (instant gratification). Bryce note: Whoa. I cannot stop watching this GIF. Before I get into the actual program, let me give you a little background on the state of teen resources at my library. Every summer our Summer Reading Program gives away a new book to kids/teens who complete the Summer Reading Program. The books that do not get claimed have gone into storage hoping that someone will pick them next year, or the year after, or the year after that and so on. As teens are generally more interested in new hot titles, there are a lot of single titles that have sat unclaimed, year after year. When I got the position, I found that I had boxes of books of older titles. Most of them were not bad books, they just were no longer popular, or the cover art was outdated, things like that. We also get a lot of donations of books. I was able to draw from these resources and create a few (5) themed bundles. Each bundle had at least a couple of popular books to draw people’s attention to the bundle. I took some old coffee cans and created titles for them to show the theme. I also included some pictures of the popular books in the respective bundles. I made sure each bundle had at least 10 books in it as I will add more to the bundles throughout the school year based on donations to reach the promised 15-20 books. I was also able to scrounge together enough to promise a bestseller bundle raffle as a grand prize drawing. Bryce note: I love how one of the cans is named "Just When You Think It Couldn't Get Any Worse" Nitty Gritty of how it works: Teens ‘sign up’ for the program at our information desk. Signing up means that they learn how the program works and get their bingo sheet (based on one by by Random House in 2014). We also give them the option to have us hold on to the sheet for them. As I do not expect teens to be able to hold on to a single piece of paper all year, I strongly encourage them to choose this option. We have a section in a file cabinet drawer at the desk where I have file folders labeled A-Z so we can easily access the bingo sheets when teens come back in. The center square of the sheet is ‘Introduce yourself to a librarian.’ When teens sign up, I let them know that they are capable of getting their first square/candy/raffle ticket right now. I always let them try and figure out how for themselves (problem solving skills!) but will give them a hint if they appear to be getting frustrated. Side note: A couple of my teens whom I made contact with through the summer reading program found this square incredibly hilarious and had fun trying to come up with creative ways to ‘introduce’ themselves to me. From there, teens just need to read. When they finish a book, they come in and let us know what book it was and which square they wish it to go for (each book is only 1 square). Each time they tell us about a square they get a piece of candy and a raffle ticket which they get to choose which bundle they enter to win – so they more they do the more chances they have to win books. At the end of the school year, anyone who gets blackout (all of squares) on the bingo sheet will be entered to win the grand prize bestseller bundle. Every time a teen gets a raffle ticket, I put the coffee cans out for them to take their time to choose which bundle they wish to enter. Depending on the teen, I will engage them in conversation or will ‘work’ on something else while they decide – some teens have a very hard time making decisions when other things are going on. When I leave them to decide I always ask them to let me know which bundle they chose to make sure they feel like I am interested in them. Since one of the goals of the program is to get teens more engaged in the library, we included one box where teens have to attend a program. When I went into the schools to talk to the teens about this program I got the question: “does this count as a program?” a few times– from the teens who thought they were being clever. Since I try to never say the word no to teens I told them to come in and make the argument to me that this should count. So far, I have had one teen take me up on it. Since it got them in the door and participating, I gave them the square. Speaking of going into the school, while I was at the middle school, the majority of the teachers I spoke to told their class that they would give extra credit to any students who participated in the bingo program. This has led to an increase in our participation – Yay! Want to play YA Reading Bingo your library? Click the link below to download if you're having a hard time with embiggening the image up top: YA Reading Bingo Card What's your favorite passive program for teens? Feel free to share in the comments!
These easy Minute To Win It games for kids require minimal supplies and leave no mess behind! These games guarantee a blast of fun for all!
About seven months ago, I noticed a new trend among public libraries of offering “adulting” programs. When I first saw a posting via social media about this program, my brain screamed, “Where were …
Video Games and libraries are a perfect mix! Video games are all about storytelling, fun, and artwork. Libraries can run dynamic video game programs for teens – and you don’t need expen…
Recently, an out-of-state librarian contacted me about our monthly teen trivia program. She had questions about how we run the program, where to get questions, attendance, etc… I replied with…
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…
…by making an old-school fortune teller, of course! Here’s our template (feel free to print and use it yourself!), but read on for DIY instructions! What You’ll Need: Paper Scissors Markers (optional) Creativity!! Step 1: Starting with a blank 8.5 x 11
Lester Public Library, Two Rivers, Wisconsin
10. Gigantic Bowling – 53 votes 9. Candy Sushi – 54 votes 8. Movie Marathon -56 votes 7. Scavenger Hunt – 59 votes 6. Totally Tech Lock-In – 60 votes 5. Mini-Golf in the Lib…
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…
Here are some fun online tools you can use for some exciting virtual programming challenges!
I’m always looking for small program ideas that don’t take a lot of planning time, are inexpensive, are flexible, and appeal widely. Here are three to try. Sci-Fi Stitches – or – Embroidered notecards You can be silly or serious with this one. I did both and both were fun. For the “sci-fi stitches” I […]
Is “reading more books” on a list of your New Year resolutions? Retreat by Random House have prepared the 2014 edition of a printable Reading Bingo. It contains 24 reading challenges th…
Nailed It is a popular show on Netflix where amateur bakers must recreate difficult desserts. If you haven’t seen it, it’s great; check it out. Many teens watch the show and many teens…
Howdy I had a pin on my Young Adult / Teen Anime Manga Club Pinterest board for Anime Twister. I made my own version for anime club tonight. You can print the base for the spinner at the link below. You will want to print the spinner on one page and then for each of the four characters, you will want to print 6-8 pages to mimic the original Twister game. If you expect a larger group you could print lots more. I made the spinner by taping the printed spinner onto a piece of cardstock. I cut a long triangle or arrow from another piece of card stock. I didn't measure, I just eyeballed something that was long enough to reach the characters' faces. Using scissors I poked a hole through the arrow, the paper, and the cardstock. I made the hole larger than the brad (brass fastener) that I was using to hold it all together. I found the trick was to not bend the brad too tightly. If you fold the brad totally flat to the spinner, the arrow won't move. It was a little flimsy but this way if I want to change the characters it would be easy enough to take the whole thing apart again. Because the original pin was for Hayao Miyazaki characters I used Calcifer from Howl's Moving, Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service, a soot sprite from Spirited Away, and Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro. I discovered that many of my teens weren't familiar with those characters or their movies. It gave me a lot of ideas of things to show at upcoming Anime Manga Club meetings. You can use the Publisher file below to add new characters to match what your Anime Club is doing. Print your own copy of the PDF or Publisher file below. Laura Disclaimer
December means dark and chilly nights, lots of gingerbread treats, and more patrons in the library because of finals. Our library completely fills up near the end of the semester. Every table and o…
It almost seems too simple, too good to be true – the low maintenance, high attendance program that high school students flock to, that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Exam Cram. Finals Service. Study Blitz. Whatever you want to call it, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. Full disclosure, I didn’t come […]
Travel the seven seas and read almost 80 YA books set around the world.
Each year, practically every public library across the United States runs a summer reading program for children. Age ranges vary, but the typical audience is school age children. The reason is that…
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…
I think I love dystopian stories because I've always kinda wanted to be in a rebellion. I read the Giver along with everyone else in junior high, took a class on dystopias in college (where I was introduced to the lovely "Uglies" series), and latched onto The Hunger Games and Divergent when they got big. At our library we've done a few Hunger Games programs before (read my posts about the training here and the games here), but I wanted to do something a little more complicated. A little more in depth. Honestly, I wanted a rebellion. After a fair bit of brainstorming with our teen workers, we were able to come up with a format for a teen program that would capture the essence of the whole dystopian trend: basically, the oppressive government against the brave rebellion. We wanted to do this in a way that was fair, fun and (sneakily) educational. I think we accomplished all three! This event was broken into three phases. The first phase was sorting. One common practice in modern dystopian fiction is to sort the general population into classes/districts/factions. I always feel like this enhances the immersion of readers, mainly because you're left wondering "what group would I belong to?" I knew that this was something we definitely wanted to include in our program, so that night started out with the participants taking a quiz to find out what "sector" they would belong to. The quiz was just one I had found online and edited a bit to fit our purposes. We then "labeled" the participants with bracelets that said what sector they belonged to (pictured at the top of this post). The participants also got a list of dystopian books and highlighted the ones they had read. We counted them up and put the number on their bracelets, telling them it would determine their "rank" in whatever group they ended up in. This made sorting them into "rebels" and "government" easier for us because we could make sure the teams were evenly matched. We thought we might have trouble convincing the "government" group, but it turns out they were as excited to be the bad guys as the rebels were to be the rebellion! Phase two was the "battle planning" stage for both groups. Once we had them sorted to our satisfaction, I led the rebellion downstairs while my co-worker led the government group upstairs. We informed them that the battle would consist of three parts: the intelligence test (a quiz in dystopian knowledge), the physical test (a game of ninja, a current favorite of theirs), and then a debate (which we basically wanted to be a fun mudslinging campaign). I also told them they needed to think of a name, a slogan, and design a flag. The Rebellion decided that they were the "Elementals" and the government named themselves the "Capitol." Phase three was battle time! We started out with a game of trivia, using just little facts I had gotten from the internet. I tried to focus around the series that I thought they had read, but I totally missed the mark on some of them (apparently Matched wasn't that popular with this crowd!). They still had a lot of fun, and we ended up with a tied score. We then took them downstairs to a sort of fighting ring to play a few rounds of "ninja." I don't think I can explain in a way that does this game justice, so just take a look at this guide if it looks like something you'd like to try with your group. Again, there was no clear winner of this game. It was just a bunch of hilarious fun. The last part of the battle was the mudslinging campaign. We had encouraged the groups to think of silly little remarks to use against the other groups. We told them that the debate would be decided by the amount of laughs their comments got, rather than how mean they were. I have to say, some of the things these teens thought of made me laugh quite a bit. While they were debating both teams held up their flags to show some team spirit. They were great! In the end there was no clear winner, which they didn't seem to mind at all. As we herded everyone out the door, we kept hearing exclamations of "already!?" and "can we do it again?" That's when I knew that our event was a hit. If I did it again: I'd make a playlist for both areas. I know it's a small detail, but music is a big help in setting the atmosphere, as well as a being a big deal to teens. It's a subtle way to keep them in the loop. Find someone on the outside of the group? As them if there's a song they'd like to add to the list. I'd be prepared for more people! We thought that our event would have 15 kids, tops. We ended up with 40! I'm not complaining, but there were a few moments that were complete chaos. If I had known how many were going to show, I probably would have planted a few kids that had prior knowledge of what was going to happen, so they could steer the group in the right direction without us having to shout every few minutes. More time! Our event was 2 hours, which was 30 minutes longer than we had originally planned! I would give more time for planning, letting them really get into it. I felt like I had to cut them off short so we could get the games in at a reasonable time.
Our library system has a number of coding and robotics kits that circulate between branches, including Robot Mouse, Ozobot Bit, and LEGO Mindstorms, but before introducing any of the tech, I wanted kids to have had a different experience interacting with the concepts of coding.
In my first few months at my current job, I visited every member library to get a feel about how they serve their particular community. I found that every library is doing great things to respond to their community needs. With winter reading on my mind, I was enamored by this teen passive program I had never seen before at Forest Grove Library! Amy Gregory is an Adult Services Librarian in Forest Grove who also focuses on teen services. I asked if she would share her process of creating this awesome teen passive program at her library so others might as well. She even added her own GIFs! Take it away, Amy: I became the teen librarian less than a year ago at the Forest Grove City Library. We have a dedicated physical space for our teens, but they are rarely in the library and we have very little teen participation. Over the year I have been here, I have been trying to find ways to attract teens into the library and encourage participation. My latest attempt to bring the teens into the library is to offer teens a chance to win lots of books and get candy. I have come to realize that teens are motivated by the possibility of winning really big prizes and instant gratification. As such I am giving them the opportunity to win 15-20 free books (big prize to aspire to) and get a piece of candy each time they participate (instant gratification). Bryce note: Whoa. I cannot stop watching this GIF. Before I get into the actual program, let me give you a little background on the state of teen resources at my library. Every summer our Summer Reading Program gives away a new book to kids/teens who complete the Summer Reading Program. The books that do not get claimed have gone into storage hoping that someone will pick them next year, or the year after, or the year after that and so on. As teens are generally more interested in new hot titles, there are a lot of single titles that have sat unclaimed, year after year. When I got the position, I found that I had boxes of books of older titles. Most of them were not bad books, they just were no longer popular, or the cover art was outdated, things like that. We also get a lot of donations of books. I was able to draw from these resources and create a few (5) themed bundles. Each bundle had at least a couple of popular books to draw people’s attention to the bundle. I took some old coffee cans and created titles for them to show the theme. I also included some pictures of the popular books in the respective bundles. I made sure each bundle had at least 10 books in it as I will add more to the bundles throughout the school year based on donations to reach the promised 15-20 books. I was also able to scrounge together enough to promise a bestseller bundle raffle as a grand prize drawing. Bryce note: I love how one of the cans is named "Just When You Think It Couldn't Get Any Worse" Nitty Gritty of how it works: Teens ‘sign up’ for the program at our information desk. Signing up means that they learn how the program works and get their bingo sheet (based on one by by Random House in 2014). We also give them the option to have us hold on to the sheet for them. As I do not expect teens to be able to hold on to a single piece of paper all year, I strongly encourage them to choose this option. We have a section in a file cabinet drawer at the desk where I have file folders labeled A-Z so we can easily access the bingo sheets when teens come back in. The center square of the sheet is ‘Introduce yourself to a librarian.’ When teens sign up, I let them know that they are capable of getting their first square/candy/raffle ticket right now. I always let them try and figure out how for themselves (problem solving skills!) but will give them a hint if they appear to be getting frustrated. Side note: A couple of my teens whom I made contact with through the summer reading program found this square incredibly hilarious and had fun trying to come up with creative ways to ‘introduce’ themselves to me. From there, teens just need to read. When they finish a book, they come in and let us know what book it was and which square they wish it to go for (each book is only 1 square). Each time they tell us about a square they get a piece of candy and a raffle ticket which they get to choose which bundle they enter to win – so they more they do the more chances they have to win books. At the end of the school year, anyone who gets blackout (all of squares) on the bingo sheet will be entered to win the grand prize bestseller bundle. Every time a teen gets a raffle ticket, I put the coffee cans out for them to take their time to choose which bundle they wish to enter. Depending on the teen, I will engage them in conversation or will ‘work’ on something else while they decide – some teens have a very hard time making decisions when other things are going on. When I leave them to decide I always ask them to let me know which bundle they chose to make sure they feel like I am interested in them. Since one of the goals of the program is to get teens more engaged in the library, we included one box where teens have to attend a program. When I went into the schools to talk to the teens about this program I got the question: “does this count as a program?” a few times– from the teens who thought they were being clever. Since I try to never say the word no to teens I told them to come in and make the argument to me that this should count. So far, I have had one teen take me up on it. Since it got them in the door and participating, I gave them the square. Speaking of going into the school, while I was at the middle school, the majority of the teachers I spoke to told their class that they would give extra credit to any students who participated in the bingo program. This has led to an increase in our participation – Yay! Want to play YA Reading Bingo your library? Click the link below to download if you're having a hard time with embiggening the image up top: YA Reading Bingo Card What's your favorite passive program for teens? Feel free to share in the comments!
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…
