Today, we are officially beginning our road trip across the United States with the first stop– Washington, D.C. I’m doing what I can to help teach American and World history in a fun way, from cup stacking to line dancing, sharing my love for history as I go.
Author: School-Age Programs and Services Committee
Tuning Up Bike Month Programming
May is Bike Month, so it’s a great time to tune up your bike and your library’s bike-related programming. Between circulating bikes, riding book bikes to outreach events, and offering bike repair workshops or stations, opportunities abound for connecting communities with alternative transportation. Libraries also offer books, of course! These resources and activities can help build a strong cycling community in Bike Month and beyond.
Bring Kids All Together Now—With Collaborative Bulletin Boards
Collaborative bulletin boards are great for summer reading programs. They keep kids busy during the school break with much less effort than putting together a structured program. And they fit perfectly with this summer’s CSLP theme
Reflective Practice in Children’s Services
Setting aside just fifteen minutes a week for reflective writing has made a huge difference for me, from planning more successful programs to making better use of my time to feeling more motivated and joyful at work. This post will show you how to do it and how it will improve your programs.
Partnering to Increase Program Reach and Impact: Musical Story Hour with the Moab Music Festival
Four times a year the library teams up with Moab Music Festival to present a special Musical Story Hour featuring a new musical artist(s). Musical Story Hour has been one of our library’s most consistent programs since 2018; it was one of our library’s first programs to transition to an online offering during the pandemic and last year was offered in city parks to a multigenerational audience.
Adventures in Programming: When I Grow Up
Description, images and top tips for creating a play-based learning and career exploration program for younger children at the public library.
Expanding Reader Response through Multimodal Opportunities
In the real world, how often have you read a chapter, an article, or a blog post and immediately thought the best way to make sense of what you just read is to answer discussion questions or write an essay? Contrast that with the number of times you’ve read something that resonated with you—maybe it thrilled or even haunted you—and then instantly sought someone to share your thoughts with. Or perhaps you sat still after reading, letting yourself fill with feelings first, and then turned those feelings into drawing, music, or even dance. When a text moves a young reader in a significant way, we see them respond to texts in a variety of ways that are more authentic than answering prewritten discussion questions or answering a writing prompt. We see them laugh aloud and physically imitate characters actions or voices. We see them using cushions and giant blocks to…
Roll the Dice: Get Outside Your Comfort Zone with School Aged Programs and Services!
As librarians serving school-aged children, it can be easy to stick to our comfort zone with the tried and true programs that we have done in the past or with programs that are on topics that we personally know a lot about. It is also tempting to stick with programs that have all the pieces in place to run smoothly instead of introducing new programs. I am here to encourage you to get outside your comfort zone with new programming, to stretch yourself into new areas, and to try an “everything is beta” approach to programming! I will share about an after-school program that has caused me to stretch outside my comfort zone with my middle school students and offer some tips for making such programs work. When I began working at my middle school, a small group of parents were running an afterschool program for Dungeons & Dragons players. …