Such a cute and easy display! This display was originally covered with You Wouldn't Want To Be.... and Who Was series which are 2 of our more popular collections at the moment. However, those went fast so some non-fiction titles that aren't quite biographies have been included... 😁

Having Passive Program type Bulletin Boards are SO MUCH FUN!!

Typically, we leave craft supplies and directions out on a table until the bulletin board is either full or we run out of supplies.

This year, we'll be decorating stockings to hang on the fireplace and/or around the Chimney.... Since this will more than likely involve sequins and other sparkly things that are a pain to vacuum we decided to decorate stockings at our Holiday Open House.

Minecraft confuses me- I'll just go straight out and say that, but there's no ignoring its popularity. So because I had NO IDEA how to incorporate Minecraft into a library program, we decided to combine it with our summer reading room decorations. Normally, we'll adorn our walls with properly themed art pieces, but this year, we advertised our Minecraft program as the kids chance to help decorate our room. There were 2 different decorations to make..
 
SCULPTURES 
To construct the base forms, we used small cardboard boxes and mini gift boxes previously ordered from Oriental Trading.

We'd had mini boxes left over from a past program so those were used to create animal sculptures. They were just hot glued together. There's a cow, pig, chicken and creeper.


The original idea was to let the kids stack boxes to make the critters themselves. ...We decided against that, since it actually took me over half a day to get all these guys ready!

Also 3 ghasts were constructed because they're super easy to make. Those were small boxes, folded all the way out with cardboard covering the openings at the top and bottom.

These were decorated using square pieces of construction paper... again, leftovers from a previous craft.


This is how I found myself the morning before the program tracing critters onto poster board.

We had Ender Dragons, spiders, cats and some Zombies. To maintain the pixelated Minecraft look, we used squares cut from tissue paper and crepe paper and glued them onto the bodies.

What I liked about using this instead of the construction paper squares was since they were more translucent you could still see the sharpie outline through the paper.

Interspecies friendships in the Wizarding World are rare. Here are some thoughts on Bill Weasley and goblins.

For Story Crafternoon - our elementary age, after school storytime - we've been reading Aesop's Fables. This week was "The Ant and the Grasshopper".

In this story, a colony of ants are preparing for winter by building up their food stores with hard work. A grasshopper watches on playing music through the night and disturbing the ants sleep. When winter comes, the grasshopper realizes that he is not prepared for the cold months like the ants and begs them to share their food with him. The moral being: There's a time for work and a time for play.

This storytime itself was incredibly short but loads of fun. Typically I like to have a craft, but instead we had a scavenger hunt to find/gather our own snacks like the ants in the story. As kids came in, I had them sit down at the table were we worked on worksheets to unscramble letters to form words. I acted like it was just to pass time, but it really wasn't. 😉

For this hunt, I printed off 16 leaves on green sheets of construction paper to cut out. I hid them in the room, telling them they were all in plain sight except for some that may be underneath chairs or
hidden behind cushions (plastic square cushions stacked in the corner that we use for PreK storyime).

On the backs of these leaves were groups of colored letters.To find their treasure, they had to unscramble these letters to uncover the location to search next. Just like they had been unscrambling words as they came in!

But first, they had to sort the colors.

Once the colors were sorted and words unscrambled, there were 4 locations to search. These were hidden inside certain cabinets, drawers or boxes. .. Which is why it was stressed that no green leaves were hidden inside anything.  I didn't want them to find these boxes prematurely!!

Inside the wrapped packages were candy: Reeses Pieces, Hersey Kisses, etc.

They had to bring the packages to the table and unwrap together, then I let them decide what the best way to divide their loot among themselves by themselves. And actually, they divided it up so there was even some left over for me to share with some kids who came into the Children's Dept after the program! Of course, I don't think they intended for that to happen.

This was a super easy storytime to set up, it got the kids moving, having fun and problem solving. Overall, it was a success and I would definitely repeat this with another group.

Did I mention we talked about ants too? I tried to make it a little educational, but that's not as exciting to type about...

Throughout Harry Potter Book Club at the Library, trivia has been a HUGE crowd pleaser! After a while though, making up trivia questions and answers can get old.

Harry Potter Would-You-Rather Jenga was a nice reprieve.

This combines over 100 either/or questions covering front and back of a single Jenga block.

For these questions, I collected from Kimberly Fidler at Get Away Today Vacations, along with inspiration from this Teachers Pay Teachers link.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use all the questions I made since not all the kids had read up to the book that we were set to discuss.

So although we were supposed to be reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we were actually only openly talking about events pre-Lupin. But it worked out ok! (Except for that one spoiler we let slip that one time.... 😨) 

 Anyway, it turns out Would You Rather and Jenga are a GREAT mash-up game. Who knew? Let's just hope the tape peals off the wood blocks easily.

For this game we followed standard Jenga rules. The tower was built and we began playing. As each person removed a block, they would answer the Would You Rather question on top and so on.

After a while, the group diverted from the rules and soon, every Would You Rather question became a table top discussion for the group to each answer. 

Questions were taped to both sides of the block so when it came time to rebuild the tower, there would always be a question on the top (this way,  we didn't have to worry about having pieces upside down or not). 

 Click here for a link to my PDF questions.


Or, click the images to enlarge.