A very short list of books that went out on our YA Read-Alike book display. A fair number of titles have been paired with a movie/tv series.






 

























These titles were used in a YA Read-alikes book display.

For the display, I printed off little flyer/sign things and rubber-banded them to the cover of each book.

I'm not going to attach my PDF since it's so basic and the chances of you having all these books is slim.

Use this as inspiration though! Take what you want from my post and leave the rest :)

If you have any amazing recommendations to share with me to add, I'd love to hear them.

Harry Potter Book Club's second meeting was so much messier than our first meeting, which made it amazing. This meeting we focused on different Hogwarts Professors through a group game of Family Feud and re-potting Mandrakes.

If you read my first post on our Harry Potter Book Club, you might remember that we're not reading and discussing the books but instead looking at different elements of the Wizarding World. This is because the audience is younger than my previous book club and it would be harder to expect them to read these books every month.

Here's a short run-down on our activities...

DISCLAIMER: I cannot take credit for either of these ideas (Family Feud and re-potting
Mandrakes)

Mandrakes Craft

Cami at The Naptime Reader has a wonderful picture tutorial on how to make these Mandrakes out of clay. I suggest visiting her website for any and all instructions regarding this craft!

To account for time, we did leave out a few of her steps.

For simplicity sake, I printed out the tutorial from her blog to explain to the group what we were doing.

With picture instructions readily available, the kids were able to manage this craft without much intervention on my part. This craft was so self-sufficient, I was able to step back and watch the crafting process. In fact, my main role was just distributing the clay.

This activity does have a bit of clean-up involved when it comes to getting the clay residue off the table.


In lieu of a discussion, we played Harry Potter Family Feud. These questions and answers were pulled from online and when I find the source, that link will be shared here!

A questions/answer sheet was printed off on a sheet of paper for me. Game cards were printed off on card stock. These were sticky tacked to the wall and as kids guessed the correct answer, cards were flipped around to show the answer and point value.

You might notice the stickers in the top right corner of the cards and beside the questions on the answer sheet. These were to help keep the answers organized with the correlating question. Also, each answer card has it's number written in the corner so the answer order doesn't get lost when tacking them to the board.

If I'd had access to a screen in our storyhour room, I would have done this through power point and made it easy.


Click HERE family feud questions
 
Click HERE for family feud answers


I will continue to look for the original publisher of the Family Feud questions.

Another short and sweet craft/activity write-up today. For this months I Survived Book Club meeting, my coworker stepped in for me and led the discussion. However, I really wanted to share this cup racing game with you.

This was inspired by An Almost Unschooling Mom's blog post, which can be found here!

In this book, Paul Colbert is an 11 year old boy living in occupied France. One day, a carrier pigeon finds him crying on the road and leads him away into a clearing, where an Allied soldier, Victor Lopez, is trapped in a tree. Paul cuts Victor free of the tree and when Nazi soldiers and a dog come along, they hide together. Victor is wounded though and the dog, who can smell his blood, charges their hiding place. The carrier pigeon bravely distracts the dog by attacking it and forcing the dog to run off with the officers following it. The pigeon plays another role further along in the story, but I won't give it all away.

Because the carrier pigeon was such a fun character, when it came to finding a craft or activity for this book, this idea just clicked.

For this game, players created their own carrier pigeons with plastic cups. These were threaded  through a string, extended the length of the room and players could race them by blowing into the cup, making them fly.

 HOW TO:
This is super simple. As previously stated, I wasn't able to host book club, but my coworker said this activity went over very well.

1. Using a small plastic or paper cup, chisel a hole in the bottom for the yarn to be threaded through.

2. Print out wings and head to color and then cut out. Here's my PDF! (Bear in mind, I'm no professional. These were hand drawn, scanned and cleaned up in MS Office.... So no judgements.)

3. Tape wings and head to cup. Your bird will also need a secret message to help balance it out when it's suspended on the sting, so it doesn't flip upside down.

4. Thread a piece of yarn through it, running the length of the room.

5. Blow in the cup to make it move and race against other birds.

 First person to the other side of the room is the winner!

One thing that my coworker did say, is that she gave them the option to race their birds here or take them home to fly. If the kids wanted to take them home, she sent them home with a strand of yarn. Several raced their carrier pigeons at the library though.

And that's it!
Feel free to use my PDF for whatever you need and GOOD LUCK with your cup racing! If you try this idea out, let me know how it went 😀

 

The Research Robot was a passive program that encouraged kids to research using books set out on the table and as a rotating non-fiction display.

This display was changed weekly, with questions ranging from "Who painted the Mona Lisa?" to "How many moons does Jupiter have?" to "What did Paul Bunyan do for a living?".

Animal questions were the favorite though! But really, who's surprised by that?

Every Monday, a new question was put out with a selection of books that contained the answer.

The answer to last weeks question was always included on the new sign.

There was no prize for feeding your answer to the Research Robot, although SEVERAL kids asked.

Originally, the robot was a square box, covered in construction paper, cut to make him look robotic with a plain basket of answer sheets and pencils. Sad to say, but when he got a makeover, he generated a lot more attention!

Here are a couple pictures.

If you read my post on our Lego Spinning Challenge Wheel, then you're familiar with our re-vamping Lego Hour at the Library. But here's a brief summary: This school year, we've put a list of different building themes on a spinning wheel and each meeting, one participant gets to spin the wheel that will determine our challenge!

This post is going to be a list of what those challenges are. A PDF copy will be attached below.

Full disclaimer: This list is compiled from different web sites and I can't take credit for the ingenuity of many ideas. If you're looking for fantastic STEM challenges, check out The Lego Librarian. His challenges are incredibly creative and several have made my list.


This is our new Lego spinning wheel that we've started using.

For the tutorial on how it was made, visit this blog post!

There are 19 different challenges.

When the time came to make this list and write them on the wheel, I knew I wouldn't be able to remember them all so each challenge got it's own envelope with a brief description written out.

Some description sheets have pictures to share with an idea of what the end result of a challenge will look like.

Also, several of these description sheets involve other supplies that you'll need to be aware of and have access to on a dime's notice.

These are items such as blindfolds, marbles, a fan, water, etc.

This is a picture of my pile of envelopes and one description sheet.

Here's a list with links leading to some of the sites I took inspiration from...

My 19 Challenges
1. Spinner's Choice
2. Build a Scene From a Book
3. Double-Decker Races
4. Build Something From the Future
5. Alphabet Challenge
6. Build a Bridge
7. Group Masterpiece
8. Build the Tallest Tower
9. Build a Zoo
10. Lego Charades
11. Build a Maze
12. Build a Wind Racer
13. Epic Marble Run
14. Water Works
15. Ramps and Slides
16. Blindfold Builds
17. Build a House on Stilts
18. Turtle Races
19. Build a Castle With a Working Drawbridge

Click here for the PDF file of my list and printable description sheets

For the new school year, our LEGO Hour program got revamped.

These past few months, instead of challenges, we've been having Free Build days where kids come in and build whatever their hearts desire. You can imagine, after a while that gets old.

To add a new interactive element to the program, I designed a Lego wheel to determine our monthly challenges. Listed on the wheel are 19 different themes. One lucky attendee gets to spin the wheel each month to see what our challenges are (usually whoever has a birthday that month).

Here's a brief tutorial on how I built the spinning wheel.

HOW-TO MAKE A SPINNING WHEEL
Supplies Used:

• Foam Board
• Cardstock Paper
• Cardboard
• Dowel Rod (small piece)
• Thumb Tack
•  Hot Glue & Stick Glue

My goal was to make a Wheel of Fortune type wheel that would spin and come to a stop naturally.

Step One: Preparing Your Pieces

Cut a large circle out of the foam board for the base of the wheel.
Create the cover that will lay over the foam board wheel. I made triangles in alternating colors.
Cut several smaller squares to act as filler between the wheel and the cardboard background.
For the background, I used one pre-cut sheet of the cardboard. (That's how it comes in our book order boxes😄)

The foam board and cardboard filler pieces all got holes cut into the center of them. The hole was just wide enough for the dowel rod to fit through them and allow them to spin.

Step Two: Assembly

Decide where you want your wheel to sit on your background. Trace around it and find the center. It's important that you find center to have that stability as it spins.

Once you find center, build up height with those filler pieces.
Use hot glue to secure these filler pieces.

Dowel rod will need to be glued into center of the filler pieces. Be sure it extends out enough for the spinning wheel to sit on it. (My dowel rod was < 1.5 inches)

It's hard to see in this picture, but I also added a filler square to the spinning wheel. This is so both touching spinning components are cardboard.

This is also hot glued together.

At this point, you should have your background piece built up around the dowel rod keeping it in place and a support filler attached to the spinning wheel.

Set the wheel over-top the background piece with the dowel rod coming through.

Make sure the dowel rod lays flush with the top of the wheel.

Step Three: Make it SPIN

To make it spin, I hammered a thumb tack into the center of the dowel rod.

As an extra level of precaution, once the hole was made by the tack, I removed it, added a dot of hot glue to the rod and put the tack back.

This connects the tack to the background piece while leaving the spinning wheel free floating and allowing it to spin.


Attach the decorative cover to the front and you're done!

Also check out....

A while back our library had a Harry Potter book club for tweens, where we read through the entire series. Several different families expressed a desire for a book club for a younger audience, so this school year that's our aim!

 Since this is with a younger crowd, I didn't want to discourage anyone so instead of reading the series, we're choosing different wizarding world elements and discussing them. For instance, for our first meeting, instead of talking about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone we just talked about Hogwarts Castle. Next month we're talking about Hogwarts Professor's and classes.

HOGWARTS HOUSE SORTING
The first order of business in any Harry Potter Book Club is sorting the kids into different houses.
Our group was sorting by choosing a cupcake, each filled with a small spot of different food coloring: red for Gryffindor, blue for Ravenclaw, yellow for Hufflepuff and green for Slytherin.

If you look up "Sorting House Cupcakes" on Pinterest, you'll find other bloggers who have done this. I can't take credit for this idea.

For the toppers, I printed off Sorting Hats on Publisher, cut them out and glued them together with a toothpick in the middle.

Remember to print off equal amount of mirror imaged Sorting Hats so when you put wrong sides together, they match. 

Once individuals are sorted, they each get a house badge to wear and keep. 

REJECTED HOUSE SORTING IDEA
One sorting idea I was playing around with was a quiz.

 The idea behind this quiz was, besides your standard school supplies you had to choose 5 things to take with you to Hogwarts. What would you pick?

Kids would choose 5 different items from this list. Each item was assigned one specific house, which I had a master key of what object was assigned where.

Where ever the majority of the chosen items were from would determine what house you were in.

Here's a PDF to the quiz and answer sheet.

Ultimately, I felt like this didn't have the umpth I wanted for a sorting activity.

Maybe you can find a use for it!


HOUSE CUP POINTS

Throughout the duration of book club, we keep up with house points on our chart.

If you come to book club, you earn your house 1 house point.

If you wear your badge to book club, you earn your house 1 more house point.

House points can also be earned through other little things throughout the meeting.

At the end of the year, whichever house has the most house points wins a special prize!

HOGWARTS CASTLE QUIZ

Because we were discussing Hogwarts Castle for this meeting, we decided to test the group to see who could name the most rooms inside the Castle.

We split off into groups and they were given 5 minutes to come up with as many different rooms as they could.

I was fully expecting someone's list to read:

Gryffindor Common Room
Gryffindor 1st year boy dorms
Gryffindor 1st year girl dorms
Gryffindor 2nd year boy dorms
Gryffindor 2nd year girl dorms
Gryffindor 3rd year boy dorms
Gryffindor 3rd year boy dorms

And so on and so on, but no one did it!

OWL CRAFT

Our craft idea came from Amanda at A few Shortcuts. I wanted to do something super simple since it was out first meeting.

Check out her blog post for the video on how to make this adorable owl!!




Let me know how your book club goes!

Every year March creeps up too quickly, too quietly to make a Book Madness bulletin board.

Not this year though!

After 6 years in the children's department, I finally entered March prepared 😁

Several fellow staff members helped cultivate this list to make sure the best books were selected for our Sweet Sixteen.

These were all chapter books except two.

To give our younger patrons something familiar to vote on, we included The Berenstain Bears vs. Pete the Cat. Which, if I were to do this all over again, these would not have included these 2 since they did not fit the initial criteria.

In fact, I believe they swayed the vote. The younger kids wanted to vote for Pete the Cat and the older undecided voters also voted for Pete for (presumably) nostalgia reasons.

Side note: I probably wouldn't have cared so much if Pete hadn't posed such a threat to Harry.

Our ballots were designed to be cut into quarters.

This layout worked ok but when we repurposed "Book Madness" display to fit Alabama's Bicentennial SRP theme, we re-did the ballot.
This ballot was a half sheet and was easier to understand with the extra spacing.

"Alabama Madness" came down to Space & Rocket Center vs. Beaches.

All in all, this board was a lot of fun for the families. If you're considering doing one at your library, do it!