I really try to go all out when we do our after school programs during the PTO meetings, because most of the time kids are *there* at the school anyway, so if I do a really cool program, they’re already around to come for it. SO I figured decorating cupcakes and voting on the best ones would be a really good way to get a lot of kids to attend. I ended up with 35! A few of them were middle schoolers who had siblings also attending, but overall I was really happy with the numbers!
So in my preparation for this program, things did not exactly go as planned. First of all, I had about a dozen people sign up in the last 2 days before the program. It’s really hard to plan in a timely manner when that happens, but I’ve sort of learned to work around it, because I *never* tell anyone they are’t welcome.
I am a procrastinator by nature, but I procrastinated intentionally this time on getting cupcakes so that I knew I would have enough and wouldn’t have to rush around and make up the difference the night before. So my plan was to buy cupcakes from a grocery store bakery, plain with no icing, and then buy icing in containers and let the kids decorate them on their own. I approached two grocery stores about doing this, and they both told me that the un-iced cupcakes would cost the same as the iced ones… So $13 for 24 cupcakes.
I needed a lot of cupcakes. I knew I was going to have about 35 kids, and I wanted them to each decorate 2 cupcakes, so in the end I decided to make cupcakes instead of buying them. And since I needed several dozen, I divided labor by asking a few people who work for the library to take a mix and bake some for me!
In the end, we had around 85 cupcakes. And we only needed about 70, so I had some leftover. Even so, I am SO glad I over prepared and would recommend doing that for a program like this.
I had two other librarians helping me with this program, and luckily a few grown-ups who didn’t go to the PTO meeting were around to help too.
I forgot to get a picture of the table before we started, but we had white and chocolate cupcakes, and white icing with their choice of food coloring. For decorations we had chocolate chips, gummy bears, gummy worms, marshmallows, animal crackers, crushed Oreos and M&Ms. They were told to only take what they knew they were going to use, since everyone was going to decorate 2 cupcakes.
To get them to the cupcake tables, I asked random questions and let them line up that way. So for example I said, “If you birthday is in March you can line up”, “If you’re wearing colored socks, you can line up”. It was a fun way to do it, and it ensured that my employees helping with the food coloring at the tables didn’t get totally bombarded.
Once they were dismissed to decorate, it was all craziness. It was awesome! Below are a few photos of what it looked like.
Once everyone had been up to the tables to get their first cupcake and decorations, they were allowed to get materials for a second one. After they finished both cupcakes, I had some cupcakes coloring pages for them to color in the meantime.
When everyone’s two cupcakes were finished, we voted on the best ones. Originally I had planned to do categories: “scariest”, “most colorful”, etc, but there were SO MANY cupcakes I decided in the interest of time we would just vote on the best ones. So they all had a plastic container in front of their cupcakes, and were given two Cheerios to vote with. I told them they could only vote for themselves ONCE which means the other Cheerio HAD to go to someone else. I think they did okay with it!!
I didn’t get photos with the winners because they were so excited to eat their cupcakes but I did get some photos of cupcakes by themselves!
Overall this program was a huge success! It’s the most I’ve had an an after school program so far this school year, and the kids had a great time. I had to mop the cafeteria floor after because there was icing EVERYWHERE, but it was totally worth it to see all the smiling, cupcake covered, icing stained faces. 🙂
Miss Meg's Library 