When I started this blog, I made a deal with myself. I was going to write about everything I did, even if it was a crazy mess or it wasn’t my best idea ever. This program falls into the former category! Since this program, when I’ve discussed it with people this is what I say, “This program was a good *idea* and that’s about all that was good about it”. I don’t really mean to be pessimistic here. It’s a true fact of library life that not all programs are going to be great. Sometimes things are a lot better on paper or in my crazy librarian brain than they are in real life. The trick is figuring out *why* it didn’t work and making it better the next time!
Last Spring, we started putting programs on during the PTO meetings so that students could have some kind of structured activity to do and parents would maybe be encouraged to come to the meetings if they knew their children had something to do!
So this program was my first PTO meeting program of the school year. They run on a day I usually work by myself from 3-4, so I asked one of our subs to come in and help me run the program. We had 24 kids, and not enough things for them to do!
The idea was simple (and honestly- I still think a good one); we were going to have *big* versions of popular games and they could play them while they were here. Below is a list of the games we chose, and links if I used someone else’s ideas(some of them are links like “30 Outdoor Games for Summer” or what-have-you so you may have to scroll to find the one we did):
Library Jenga (with cardboard boxes)
Giant Twister (double the circles on a king sized sheet)
Giant Memory (cards were a whole 8.5×11 sheet of paper)
I thought for sure that all that would be enough to occupy my students for an hour, but that was before logistics. My plan was to have a few things (Angry Birds, Jenga, Pool Noodle Javelin Throw and the Big Foot Race) to be outside. BUT when we started stacking boxes up, the wind just kept blowing them down. And also, I bought the wrong sized boxes for Jenga (In my defense, they were the only ones Walmart had enough on in stock, BUT I should have paid better attention to the dimensions). So almost immediately two of my games were problematic.
Real Life Angry Birds
We moved Angry Birds to the only place it could be moved: inside the library, down between two rows of shelves. It looked like this:
I decided to forgo the whole idea of a slingshot originally because we were going to be outside near cars and windows and was planning to use the pillowcases that came with the king sized sheet I bought for Twister as a sort of launcher, but when I had to move it inside, that all went out the window. They were throwing (low) or rolling the balls into the boxes and green balls (pigs). Overall it was a fun game but because of the wind it wasn’t nearly as cool as it could have been!!
Big Foot Race
The big feet were destroyed almost immediately, but they looked like this:
There was a small obstacle course in front of them, and they were supposed to see who could get done the fastest while wearing the big feet. It was hilarious, but quickly not viable anymore because they were broken after the 2nd or 3rd race.
Library Jenga
Like I said, the boxes weren’t the right size and immediately did not work for normal Jenga. I left the boxes outside (it wasn’t windy enough for them to *blow away*, just too windy to stack in a Jenga fashion), but I had several kids who spent the majority of the hour out there building whatever they wanted. They also enjoyed building something and then running into it full speed and knocking it over. Jenga or no Jenga, the boxes were a hit!
Frisbee Tic Tac Toe
I apparently didn’t get any photos of this game at this program. BUT it was a square sheet with duct tape on it to make the tic tac toe board. Then with two different colors of Frisbees (to represent Xs and Os) kids played tic tac toe! Pretty simple but honestly didn’t get a lot of traffic, hence the no photos.
Giant Twister
I made this Twister board the day before from a king sized sheet and spray paint. I cut a circle into a piece of cardboard to use as a stencil. I intentionally made two rows of each color instead of one (like on a normal Twister Board) so that it would not only be a bigger board but have more spaces! Then I used my Cricut crafting machine to make a spinner to go with it!
Overall this one was pretty popular and nothing got torn up so I can use it again in the future! Yay!
Giant Memory
One of my coworkers did this game for the program, using whole 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper for each card. She printed out a photo of a cartoon/book character (Spongebob, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Captain Underpants, etc) and then mounted them on red card stock so the kids couldn’t see through the cards. This one was popular! The only downside though was that the cards are SO big, the game had to be played on the floor.
Pool Noodle Javelin Throw
This one is leftover from a summer game program, and it got a little warped in the basement. I had to tape it to chairs to get it to stand up right, but then the object was to stand as far away as you could and still toss the pool noodle through the rings. (The tic tac toe board is in the background of this photo….lonely)
Jumbo Bowling
This is a set I bought from Walmart over the summer and so far it has been great! Its big enough that kids laugh and think its funny and it obviously works like normal bowling so they immediately know how to play. This one was also down one of the aisles and I was a little nervous we would make a mess with the books but it was actually really great! It was a hit also!
Aside form the aforementioned logistic issues I had with the box games, the issue was that kids blew through every one of these games almost immediately, and then were bored and didn’t have anything to do. After about 25 minutes, the computers were full and they were fighting over them, all the coloring pages I had laying on a table were claimed, and a few girls were actually cleaning up my toy area(presumably out of boredom but I didn’t ask them). I did get chalk out and take it to the sidewalk and a few of them went out there, but really I didn’t have another plan.
I felt really bad afterwards. It was probably the most disappointed I’ve been with myself after a program since I started programming. It wasn’t a good feeling at all and I’m sure I will never forget it! I was upset too because a lot of planning went into this. If I do a bad program and it’s my fault for procrastinating that’s one thing, but this one took a lot of work and I was sad it wasn’t more successful. It was just one of those things though I think.
Looking back I’m not totally sure how I would remedy this. Have more activities? Maybe! Get the right sized boxes for Jenga? Duh. Have a more structured multi-player game for many of them to do at once? Probably!
Either way, there are things I could improve on for next time and I am keeping that in mind!!
Miss Meg's Library 
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