Do you need something to use as a fun prize for a scavenger hunt? Do you want an interactive display for your summer program? Are you looking for something fun for the kids to use for their reading records? Use STICKERS! They are one of the most straightforward and budget-friendly things out there.
Scavenger Hunts
I have been creating scavenger hunts in our youth section and did a post about them a couple of months ago on the ALSC blog. I knew the kids would want some sort of prize for finishing the scavenger hunt, but I didn’t want to spend money on a prize. We have stickers galore in our library from buying books that come with stickers and then we store those away in a file that doesn’t get used often. Offering those as their incentive is extremely popular and kids get so excited to choose stickers. Such an easy thing to do! We will do an iRead-themed scavenger hunt this year for our summer program too.
Interactive displays
My boss started doing the Stick Together displays years ago around summer time and they are SO much fun. Every time the kids checked out books, they got to add a few stickers to the huge mosaic that we hung on the wall. They had fun guessing all month what the picture will be! On slow nights towards the end of the month, I would get to go over and add some stickers to fill in the neutral-colored stickers that the kids didn’t want to use and it is so therapeutic. This is such a fun and interactive way to celebrate the summer reading program.
Image courtesy of blogger.
Reading Records
This year, I wanted to do a reading record that wasn’t a trail. When I was a child, I remember using stickers on one of my reading records, and for some reason that became one of my core library memories. Knowing that kids still love stickers, they became my inspiration. I looked up which stickers were the cheapest because I knew we would have hundreds if not thousands of kids doing the summer program and that we would have to purchase stickers for all of them.
This is a draft of one of our reading records with the iRead artwork removed for the sake of potential copyright issues. Their artwork is always very cute though and it was easy to incorporate into this scene I created on Microsoft Publisher.
Each half-inch circle is a space they can put a sticker on when they hit their reading goal once. The number of circles corresponds to the number of days in the summer reading program, though they can finish early if they choose to. The activity flower has bigger circles and those stickers can be put on when they complete one of the suggested activities on their reading records.
I am hoping that the stickers get kids even more excited to complete their reading records.
In what ways have you used stickers in your library?