For our Summer Reading Program, we typically have 2 movie nights at the library. These are held after hours and only attendees are allowed in the building. We have snacks, crafts, activities and project the movie on one of the big walls for everyone to see. Movie nights at the library are one of my favorite programs we have.

In this post, I'm sharing our DINO DIG activity, DINO BONES craft, PASSIVE PROGRAM and little SNACK idea.

Dino Dig
Inspiration for this craft came from a recipe for "Dinosaur Eggs" from Super Simple Fossil Projects by Jessie Alkire. In this book, there are instructions on how to make Dinosaur Eggs with small plastic
toy dinos inside them. Initially, we discussed having the kids create and mold their own dinosaur egg to take home and dry. They could then crack open their egg later to reveal their dinosaur. The drying process would take a few days though, so we adapted the craft to something similar.

Our dino dig used a similar dirt recipe as the book and we encased the dinosaurs inside and let the kids dig for their dino!

Once they dug out their dinosaur, we had a cleaning station to wipe all the dirt and mess off so they could truly see and identify their dino.

Preparation Process
Recipe came from Projects for Preschoolers. The one thing I would have done differently is letting the mixture dry longer. I prepared this 3 days ahead of time to dry but it could have used more. If you're not using a large container like I did, 3 days would probably be fine.

We filled up 2 of these plastic storage bins with our dirt mixture and dinosaurs and left them outside to dry during the day and brought them inside the building during the night.

 
We had right around 40 of these guys to hide.

Dinosaurs were bought from the local dollar store and tried to get a wide variety of types.

Before burying, I snapped this picture  so I could make an identification chart with all the different types they might find.

Thankfully I was able to find a chart already made with exactly what I needed.

As kids dug up and identified their dinosaur, they could write their name under "Paleontologist" and the type dinosaur they found under "Type of Dinosaur"

And that was it.



Dinosaur Bone Art

This was another activity from the Super Simple Fossil Projects book by Jessie Alkire.

This was alot less mess than the Dino Dig but still a good bit of set-up.

For this activity, kids are coloring in a dinosaur with water color paint. Their bones have been laid out with masking tape and when the paint dries, the masking tape can be pulled up to reveal their skeleton!


Snacks

We always have popcorn at Movie Night, but we also prepared a little sweet snack to go along with this event!  ....   Pinterest always has a plethora of snack mix ideas!




Passive Program
To foster a little excitement for our Movie Night, we had these footprints printed out and set out on a table with crayons.

Kids would write something they were proud of and we'd stick it to the front of the desk.

We had some darling responses and I wish I had a picture of them! My two favorites were someone was proud of being a  cleft palate kid and another was proud of their mom sticking to her diet! 😃

Click Here for Printable Arlo Footprints

Click Here for Table Top Signs and Dinosaur Identification Chart

 Towards the end of November, we had an all day set-up of department decorating crafts. The concept was similar to come&go crafts, but instead of taking your craft home, you'd leave it with us to hang up in the room!

There were 4 different crafts to do: Ornament coloring (as seen pictured above), a paper chain, snowflake decorating and Christmas tree ornament crafts from Oriental Trading. Here's a quick breakdown of what we had...
 
 Ornament Coloring
Exactly what you think it'd be.

Beforehand, I had drawn and cut out ornaments from poster board. All we did for this craft was put them out on the table and provide crayons for kids to color them.

Once completed, ornaments received a string of yarn and they were hung on the end caps of our non-fiction shelves!

(I did google different ornament shapes though so they weren't all the same)


Snowflake, Ornament & Tree decorating
.... There's probably a better way to describe it than that ↑

In retrospect, this is very similar to the craft listed above, but for this one we pulled out stickers. And sequins. So many sequins.

This activity got the most attention. We had bought equal amounts of the different shapes from Hobby Lobby and the snowflakes were by far the most popular option.

Once completed, these were hung on our fiction shelves. 


Tree Ornaments
The past few years, instead of decorating the tree with our YS ornaments, we've let the kids decorate it themselves.

A good bit of the above craft decorated our tree too.

Little story: This year we bought several different sets of foam ornaments from Oriental Trading, at different times throughout the year. When we pulled them out for our craft day we realized that all our different sets we had bought were red, white & blue. No idea how that happened, but our tree was very patriotic.


  Paper Chain

Sometimes book dialogue comes naturally to the group and other times it doesn't. To help initiate and progress conversations, each meeting begins with discussing our favorite parts of the story. If every kid shares a scene from the book then right off the bat everyone is interacting and contributing to book club!

One of my favorite bits from I Survived The Shark Attacks of 1916 was about Hermann Oelrich, the rich shipping owner who is mentioned by Uncle Jerry. In this story, while out on a yacht with friends, Hermann jumps into shark infested waters and swam around to prove a point that sharks wouldn't attack a human. He yelled, splashed and caused a huge commotion in the water to attract the sharks but ultimately just scared them away. He offered a $500 ($12,000 in today's money) to anyone who could give a proven example of a shark attack on the Eastern Coast.

The group was very excited to hear that this was a true story and jump started our conversation to other topic points.

Of the 5 victims (Charles Vansant, Charles Buder, Lester Stilwell, Stanley Fisher and Joseph Dunn), I was only able to find 3 pictures. These were printed off and used in our discussion to help connect the story to real faces. Most of our discussion was talking about each attack individually.

This game was inspired by Battleship.The objective of this game to blast (remove) your opponents sharks out of the water (table) first. First team to do this, wins. This is accomplished by tossing in dynamite (red bean-bags) into the water towards your opponents sharks.
Set up: 
1.Taped off grid on a spare table with painters tape.

•  This included 4 squares that were marked off separately with tape.

2. Made 10 bean bag sharks in 2 different colors (5 of each).

• These were made with felt and rice. Edges were hand sewn together.

3. Covered small pieces of cardboard with painters tape and attached to table.

• >These blockers just make the game a little harder 😄

Game Play:    

• Divide into 2 teams and place sharks strategically on the board

• One player at a time, use the bean bags (our were hearts and angry birds from another program), knock your opponents shark out of the water.
• First team to clear the board of the opposing sharks wins.

Special Squares:
The 4 squares marked off separately with tape cannot be used to place sharks in when setting the board.

If a shark is knocked into this square by a team member, the opposing team is given the opportunity to resurrect one of their own sharks, moving one shark from the floor to back into gameplay.

Review:
This game was so much fun! In 1916, after Joseph Dunn was nearly killed by the shark, Matawan Creek was dynamited. The story for this game to pretend like the red bean bags were dynamite and blow the opposing teams sharks out of the water.
The group went through the game several times before deciding that they wanted to play tournament style, which we did!

The cardboard blockers lasted until about the third game but they provided the perfect challenge to make this game great.

Inspiration for this idea came from a picture off Pinterest of library books in a cage. The librarian who had done it had huge metal chains and locks around the cage, like the one you can buy from a Halloween store. (If I can ever find the original image I'll post it here!) The idea was absolutely adorable so I had to recreate it at my library!
Instead of a cage, I used an Extra Large dog crate.

We made CAUTION/ BANNED BOOKS tape with yellow crepe streamer and the words written over it. This is taped around the cage in no rhyme or reason.

For the banners, we printed off the letters onto cardstock and taped them onto pages torn out from a discarded book. The edges of the cardstock was aged with a stamp pad. These were hung to use up the dead space up at the top of the crate.

We also wrapped a spare box in these pages too to set books on top of. Just to add a bit of dimension.

Each book had a disclaimer attached to its jacket giving the reason why it was either banned or challenged.

Here's a link to the PDF of the book jacket covers!

We had lots of positive feedback on this display. And a good bit of people asking why these books were in a cage.

If you have access to a dog crate or any type of cage, this is definitely an attention grabbing display!

Our Book List:
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Crash and Burn by Michael Hassan
Emmy and Oliver by Robin Benway
Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Me, Him, Them and It by Caela Carter 
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan 
The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang 
The Ring and The Crown by Melissa De La Cruz
The Sleeper and The Spindle by Neil Gaiman
The Steep and Thorny Way by Cat Winters
The Wicked and The Just by J. Anderson Coats
What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

 

I sleep better at night knowing there is an affordable option to protect myself and my family against the dinosaurs released at Lockwood Estate. Thank you Marlin Firearms for making the world a safer place, one T-Rex at a time.