Creating Playful Opportunities @your Library

As the manager of a library with an active and busy Early Literacy Center, I’m always looking for new ways to create playful learning opportunities. Research shows that children learn most from self-directed play: activities chosen by children, where they create the structure and rules. The more I learn about play, the more I try to facilitate open-ended, child-driven play, and to help my staff and families and caregivers understand the value of this type of play. I wrote about one particularly inspiring presentation at ALSC Institute 2022 on this blog: https://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2022/09/rethinking-play/.

So I wanted to share a summer program we started in 2023 that is easy to implement and easy to replicate, focused on play (guessing that some of you may be working on summer plans now or soon!) Play Lab, held weekly in June and July takes place outdoors. Going outdoors became more typical for many libraries during the pandemic and is a great place to offer programming. Outside we can accommodate more people and everyone is more relaxed, with fewer expectations about how one is “supposed” to behave in a library. Being outdoors offers the chance for children to be messy in their exploration, with no worries about spilling/cleanup from the caregivers. It also allows for more volume – with attendance often over fifty, it can get loud! 

Play Lab offers multiple activity stations, some which are the same from week to week, and others that change. Consistent stations include the sand table, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and watering cans for the garden. Watering is definitely a favorite activity! We fill a small trash can with water so children can refill their own watering can. It’s so popular that children often have to wait for a can, so they also learn to take turns. On hot days we put water and brushes out and children “painted” with water. Another time we provided small leftover bits of sidewalk chalk that they could smash and add to the water to make “paint.” One child used their mixture to make handprints (pictured below!)  Another time we froze popsicle sticks into ice cubes for painting (which also ended up in the mouths of many younger children, but since it was just water, there was no problem with this!)  It was wonderful to see the creativity that children displayed as they used materials provided in their own ways.

One element that changed over the summer was sensory bins. We’ve been inspired by Mandisa Watts’ book Exciting Sensory Bins for Curious Kids: 60 Easy Creative Play Projects that Boost Brain Development, Calm Anxiety and Build Fine Motor Skills (Page Street Publishing, 2020). We used underbed storage boxes to hold the materials, which are usually everyday items. Incomplete toys, like alphabet sets, puzzle pieces, and other toys are great to keep for use in a sensory bin. We added special information sheets to facilitate caregivers interactions with their children. Examples include The Very Hungry Caterpillar Bin, a bubble tea party, and a Fall Sensory Bin. 

After the first summer we wanted to expand activities, so we added big blue blocks funded by a grant from the State Library of Ohio with federal funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Blue Blocks are innovative large-size building materials that come in a variety of shapes: “bricks and cylinders, accented with chutes, channels and parts that suggest motion or activity . . . these modular, rectilinear parts are easy to stack, line up, and move around.” (https://imaginationplayground.com/medium-blue-blocks/) They encourage children’s creativity as they design their own play environments.  Children engage in construction, pretend play, and role-playing while exercising social skills like communication and collaboration. There is much trial and error, failure, and trying again (design thinking) as part of the process of building. Blue Blocks can strengthen these different skills in children and facilitate complex play, including language development. The blocks also appeal to a wide range of ages, as we have more school-age children attend summer programs, and they also engaged caregivers. For example, a nine-year-old asked his grandmother to create an obstacle course for him to leap over, and she timed him. They altered the course several times to make it more challenging.

What playful learning opportunities do you offer at your library? There have been several great posts on play recently by Jamie Eastman, and other playful posts – just search this blog for “play.”  And remember, “Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” -Diane Ackerman.

This post addresses ALSC Core Competency III: Programming Skills and Core Competency I: Commitment to Client Group.

All images courtesy of author.

Robin L. Gibson is the Manager of the Northwest Branch and Early Literacy Center of the Fairfield County District Library in Carroll, Ohio and is a member of the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee.