Shrinky Dinks

I remember being in elementary school and doing shrinky dinks in the kitchen with my mom and sister. They were so fun and cool! I try really hard to do a mixture of high and low tech programs with my students. It is a fine line to show them the wonders of technology, but ALSO that you don’t *have* to have it to have fun.

For anyone who doesn’t know, here is the basic breakdown of shrinky dinks. You draw/color your design on the shrinky paper, put it in the oven/toaster oven according to the package instructions, and watch them shrink! Unfortunately I am unable to add videos to this blog, but it is really a cool sight to see. The packaging advertises that designs 3 inches around shrink to 1 inch, and become 9x as thick. When the 3 inch design gets hot enough, the plastic starts to curl up and it *almost* looks like it is going to stick to itself but it doesn’t! After a minute or so it flattens out and is just a shrunk version of the original. I baked our shrinky dinks a little less time than was suggested, because they were definitely done shrinking and I had a long line of ones to go into the toaster oven. Here is a very proud kiddo with her finished products!

The shrinky dinks I ordered were a little different than the ones I remember from my childhood. I remember using colored pencils because the shrink paper was coarse on one side, and the paper I ordered was smooth and suggested permanent markers. Totally fine and it worked *great* it was just not what I was expecting. The link to the shrinky paper I ordered is here. I recommend it!

I also opted for plain paper instead of ones with designs printed on them. This was mostly for cost reasons. You can buy shrinky dink sets that come with designs preprinted on them, and then the kiddos can just color them in, but they are much more expensive. I knew that I was probably going to have a good number of kids (we had 17) and I was pretty sure that each shrinky dink would only take them a couple of minutes to color in, meaning I would have needed a TON of designs, and it would have cost a ton of money.

So instead, I printed some common designs on printer paper and then traced them onto the shrinky paper with a black permanent marker. It was tedious work and took me almost 100% of my down time on the day of the program, but it was perfect. I had three different sheets with designs:

Sheet 1:

• Butterfly
• Heart
• Flower
• Cupcake
• Fish
• Rainbow

Sheet 2:

• Pokemon Pokeball
• Minecraft Creeper
• LEGO Block
• LEGO Person
• Basketball
• Baseball Bat

Sheet 3:

• Christmas Tree
• Gingerbread Man
• Christmas Lights
• Candy Cane
• Santa Hat
• Snowman

Here are some examples of the shrinky dink designs:

I didn’t get a lot of photos of this program because I was trying to get everyone’s shrinky dinks into the toaster oven as quickly and fairly as possible. I let them do as many as they wanted (within reason) but made them stop about 10 minutes before the program ended so that I had time to bake them all. We also gave them the option to have a hole punched in their shrinky dink (BEFORE baking) to run a string through to put it on a necklace, or to put a magnet on the back.

Here is the single, solitary photo I got of the kids working on their projects:

And here are a couple of photos of the projects in the toaster oven:

You can kind of see in the final picture what I meant about them getting really curly! They flatten out quickly though!

Unfortunately I also didn’t get a ton of pictures of final products, as I was trying to frantically bake the remaining shrinky dinks about the time the other kids were leaving. Here are a few more though!

I will definitely do this program again. It was relatively cheap and easy, and the kids had a great time! It introduced some of them to a brand new activity too and I really love that. Definitely a hit!

 

 

 

Library Scavenger Hunt

For the first PTO program of the school year, I usually try to plan something that is not specific to numbers, so that the program will be successful with 8 or 28. This day we actually had 21, so I am glad I didn’t try to plan a craft or something that would have been dependent on numbers, because that was more kids than I thought!!

This program was so simple. All I did was charge up the 5 library iPads, and make a list of scavenger hunt items they needed to find and photograph. Really, that was it! The kids had a blast and it was SO low stress for me that I am positive we will do something like this again.

Here is the list of things for them to find:

Some of them are things that are readily available in the library (we have a Clifford stuffed animal, LEGOs, a fish, tank crayons, a clock, etc) but some of the things (a volcano, a rabbit, Superman) they were going to have to look at library books to find them.  So it was a nice mixture between books and things they could see if they just looked around hard enough.

I told the kids they didn’t have to do them in any order, but that the group who photographed the most things before the program was over could pick a prize out of our treasure chest. This got them super fired up! They were all running around, but here are a few photos of them in action:

In the end, I had a group who photographed 38 things! They piked their prize and this one was over. Like I said before, this one was definitely a winner and I will totally do it again!

Origami

Program date: 5/1/19

In the fall, I couldn’t keep origami books on the shelf. So in January when we started talking about programming for the spring, I decided an origami program would probably go over really well!

This was a PTO program as well, so we were pretty well attended. The kids got to make a few different projects and some of them were really cool and different!

I had a few adult helpers for this one, because I wanted to have a person at each station. A couple of them were staff, and a couple were volunteers. It worked out really well! I’m going to go through project by project and post the instructions and also pictures of the kids making the projects.

Fortune Teller

Origami Fortune Tellers:

1. Lay your paper flat on the table and fold one corner straight up to meet the opposite corner
2. Unfold it so it is flat again, but you have a crease across the middle
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with the other two corners of the square
4. Your paper should be unfolded, but should have two creases in it in an “X” across the square
5. One by one, take the corners and fold them into the center where the creases cross
6. Flip the paper over, leaving those edges folded down
7. Now fold the corners in to the center again
8. Bring each corner in and fold towards the middle (as per bottom right photo).

Ring

Bookmark

1. Start by turning your paper upside down like a diamond.
2. Fold bottom point up to meet top corner.
3. Fold right point up to the middle point.
4. Fold left point up to the middle point.
5. Unfold both end points.
6. Fold one half of middle point down to the bottom edge.
7. Fold the right point back up to the middle point.
8. Then tuck the end underneath the fold.
9. Fold the left point back up to the middle point.
10. Then tuck the end underneath the fold.

Animal

I don’t have exact copies of the instructions for this station because our wonderful speech teacher volunteered to come up with ideas and run the table herself. I know she did cranes and frogs, so I am going to add a link to Pinterest instructions, but I am not 100% certain of the steps she took with the kiddos.

Origami Crane

Origami Frog

 

As it turns out, a lot of my photos are overlaps of different projects, and you can see several examples in each, so I am going to post them all below:

Slime Time

Program date: 4/10/19

One of the most important things I have learned in children’s librarianship is: every mess can be cleaned up. Slime is one of the messiest things I have ever done in the library. It is also by far the most consistently successful after school programs we have ever done. The first time I did slime in the library (Jan 2018), I had 58 kids show up. About 30 registered, so it was absolutely crazy. I only have 28 chairs around tables in the program area, so we moved every extra chair over. We still didn’t have enough, so I pulled down all of the front facing books on top of the lowest shelf, and tossed a table cloth over the row of shelves. (Insert shrug emoji here) Sometimes you have to do what your community LOVES even if things get a little crazy. And even if you end up picking slime out of the carpet AND your jeans.

When we do slime, we set a table up in the story pit with all of the ingredients. I generally try to get 2 people to help, so that we can dish out ingredients as kids essentially go down the line, buffet style. I found a recipe for slime on Pinterest, and I halved it to save $ and to make sure that each kid didn’t come home with a TON of slime. I didn’t think their parents would appreciate that too much. This time, I had 36 kids. Still more chairs than I have at the tables, but it was a lot more manageable than the first time!

Here’s the recipe I used:

 1/4 cup Elmer’s glue

3/4 cup Shaving Cream

1 1/4 tbs Contact solution

A couple of drops of food coloring

This is the halved recipe. The full one is in the above Pinterest link.

As the kids came in we gave them a ziploc bag and a sharpie to write their name in it. This was for their slime when it was totally finished. I called tables one at a time to come up to the ingredients table. They picked up a Styrofoam bowl and a wooden craft stick (one of the thicker ones, for mixing). As they went down the line, the staff members dished out the right increments of materials, and the kids took their bowl back to their seat.

Dishing out materials takes a long time, so sometimes the kids who go first have their slime all the way done by the time the last table gets called. I have not yet figured out a way to remedy this! After all of the kids have materials, I immediately go to them and help them stir. Some of them don’t quite grasp the concept of stirring until you are done (not just when you don’t want to stir anymore) and some only stir the top level so the glue all sits on the bottom and doesn’t get mixed in. A particular struggle this time was that the bowls were NOT big enough to hold all the materials, so they had HEAPING slime by the time they were done. It was everywhere and it was hilarious.

When their slime was almost all set (not sticking to the side of the bowl), I had them dig it out with their hands and squish it up that way for awhile. Once it was totally set (not sticky at all) they could play with it until it was time to go, then they put it in their ziploc and we were all done!

Some of their slimes turned out SO great! Here are a couple of the best ones:

 

**Quick tip for getting slime out of clothing is to freeze it with ice and then pick it off. Here’s a just-for-fun picture of me freezing slime on my jeans so I can clean them off. Like I said in the beginning, every mess can be cleaned up.

Valentine’s Crafts

Program Date: 02/06/19

Usually in February we don’t have after school programs because we run a book club instead, but because we started doing PTO Program events (so the kids have somewhere to go while their parents are at the PTO meeting) we have done this one in February for the last two years. It is always a hit! It doesn’t hurt that we offer cookie decorating as one of the stations. The promise of food is always a win for library programs!

Along with the cookie decorating station, we offered several valentine’s day themed crafts.

Cookie Decorating

I purchased sugar cookies at Walmart and vanilla icing for the kids to use for this station. I also put out different types of sprinkles, so they would have a choice! Most of the kiddos chose to eat their cookie in the moment, but a few saved it to give to their siblings which I thought was really sweet!

Crafts

I had several different stations for crafts!

Tissue Paper Hearts

I had the kids cut hearts out by folding paper in half, and then cut it again so they had only the outline of the heart. After that we stretched contact paper so that the whole, unfolded heart fit on it. The the kids were able to put different colored tissue paper squares onto the contact paper! Another layer of contact paper went down on top if it, to seal everything in.

Jewelry Making

I had several different types of beads available, including beads with letters, so the kids could make whatever they wanted! I had yarn for them and also thinner clear bead string. The foam sheets were available to cut hearts into, to use them as charms on their jewelry.

Valentine’s Bookmarks

These were a hit! Some of the little hearts and stuff were really small so I had the kids use colored pencils instead of crayons. I also had a Heart Eyes Emoji paper craft on this table! It was very simple and exactly what it looks like. Cut out hearts, glue them on, draw a mouth. Bam! You’re done!

Thumbprint Heart Magnet

For this craft, I had the kids put two thumbprints on a piece of white cardstock, overlapped slightly in the shape of a heart. They cut out the circle, and glued it to a clear glass half circle bead. Then we glued a magnet to it so they could stick it to the fridge!

“I ❤ You” Hand Craft

This one was a little confusing! The kids had a hard time visualizing what part of their hand needed to go where to make the shape, and what part needed to be cut out. I had to help with this one more than anything else! I didn’t get a great photo of this one but you can see my example in the above photo.

I am sure we will do a similar program next February because this one went great!