My Read Across America Party!
Last night I had a very successful library program, which I'm a bit puffed up on, so let me share it here.
I'm going to, once we get all settled in the new building, host a Family Fun Night for elementary-aged kids (the group that seems to get the least programming opportunities) and their families monthly or so. So far it's been more like every three months, but with the moving confusion it's not happening any more often than that. In December I had a great program on Picture Books for Older Readers ("Older" meaning "Elementary" in this case), which only three families showed up for, but they had a GREAT TIME so it's still a success, and possibly they passed the word on to others for this time around...
...or, possibly, the promise of "FOOD" on the brochure had something to do with it...
...ANYWAY, so THIS Family Fun Night was a Read Across America Day Party-- BELATED, because Read Across America Day is TECHNICALLY March 2, Dr. Seuss's birthday. Only there were already a knitting club AND a scrapbooking club meeting in the library Wednesday night (this will NOT be a problem in the new building!), so we threw this party on Thursday night instead, which is okay, because to be perfectly honest I have this problem of thinking Read Across America day is actually March 3, anyway. Because I am the library's resident Literacy Nut, who actually thinks library programs ought to encourage reading in some fashion, I was going to Celebrate The Fun Side of Easy Reader Books.
After all, you uninitiated people, this is the gift Dr. Seuss gave to the world: making simple easy-to-read beginning books ACTUALLY FUN as opposed to banal.
I inherited this weird Being Creative thing from my mother. My mom CAN do a boring, simple party, with a cake that just looks like, you know, a cake, and most of the time she DOES. But every so often she'll decide something needs a THEME, and then she won't go halfway. Hense, the Castle party on my 9th birthday, in which the entire unfinished upstairs became a castle, there were costumes, the ICE CREAM was even castle-shaped, and I'm pretty sure this whole afternoon took at least two months to prepare. Then, other times, we'd do something totally random like make a birthday cake for Abraham Lincoln, with a pretzel log cabin on top. Then there was soon-to-be-Sam's baby shower, which was Children's Literature Themed. They DID serve Green Eggs and Ham there (and to tell the truth, this party edged the name "Sam" even CLOSER to the top of my possibilities list), and I wasn't about to pass THAT up for a Seuss-themed party, but I decided to take it a LITTLE bit farther:
Here you see the Green Eggs and Ham-- and, unlike my parents, I actually COLORED THE HAM GREEN TOO; as well as Blue Goo Tarts ("Here is lots of new blue goo now..."), which are actually vanilla pudding with a lot of food coloring. Sam helped me make everything involving food coloring, and enjoyed it very much.
But this is my crowning glory:
Because "THROUGH THREE CHEESE TREES, THREE FREE FLEAS FLEW." Everyone should build some Cheese Trees in their life. Behind the cheese trees, you'll see some Pink Ink Punch ("This one, I think, is called a Yink...." There's also a reference to Pink Ink in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, but it's not as interesting a one). It's frozen strawberries blended up with strawberry-kiwi juice and tonic water. It would have been pinker (and inkier) (and possibly tastier) with yogurt or vanilla ice cream, but because I was already serving cheese and pudding, it seemed like I wasn't leaving much for people who don't eat dairy (even worse for vegans who wouldn't eat the green eggs and ham, either), so I figured I'd keep it just a punch. It worked. There's also alphabet cookies for assembling your own words. This is the only bought-from-a-package food I offered, because I'm not THAT crazy.
I prepared for about 20 people, only to find out that 10 more people signed up YESTERDAY. This turned out all right, because some of the original signups didn't show, anyway, and we ended up with a group of 23 (and still had leftover food, so we're good). We gathered as a group first and discussed a bit about Dr. Seuss and what he did and what Easy Readers actually are, and then I said, "Okay, they call these Easy Readers. BUT ARE THEY REALLY?"
...and then we did a group reading of Fox In Socks. Volunteers (though occasionally, it was their CHILDREN who volunteered a grownup to read) took a page at a time to read out loud, COLD. The best part is, of course, that this is Fox In Socks, which means kids and grownups were on equal footing, reading this out loud! It developed into lots of laughter and spontaneous applause every time someone managed a particularly difficult section.
I had been GOING to show this very short video, of possibly the fastest reading of Fox in Socks in the history of the world, but I couldn't find the extention cord for the projector and the large-screen TV is now hidden behind a Large Pile of Boxes of Books for Moving, so I just offered the link to anyone who wanted to check it out at home.
Then we spread out to the various stations. There was a Food Station, of course. Then I had a book station, with a display of some of the more recent great easy readers we have for checking out, and bookmarks listing some great easy reader series and flyers about the Geisel Award winners.
Then I had two game stations: rhyming hopscotch, with short words which you then have to find a rhyme for instead of numbers:
And non-magnetic poetry made out of the Dolch Sight Words-- can YOU write an Easy Reader out of them?
After you assemble your sentences, you tape them to the screen behind the table. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the final results, but my enthusiastic and helpful patrons took it down during cleanup before I could get to that.
I feel like I needed some more game stations, but we really didn't have space, let alone ideas!
But everyone went out the door raving to me and to the people at the front desk about what a great time they'd had, so, chalk up another success on the list of Awesome Stuff That Happens @Your Library!
I'm going to, once we get all settled in the new building, host a Family Fun Night for elementary-aged kids (the group that seems to get the least programming opportunities) and their families monthly or so. So far it's been more like every three months, but with the moving confusion it's not happening any more often than that. In December I had a great program on Picture Books for Older Readers ("Older" meaning "Elementary" in this case), which only three families showed up for, but they had a GREAT TIME so it's still a success, and possibly they passed the word on to others for this time around...
...or, possibly, the promise of "FOOD" on the brochure had something to do with it...
...ANYWAY, so THIS Family Fun Night was a Read Across America Day Party-- BELATED, because Read Across America Day is TECHNICALLY March 2, Dr. Seuss's birthday. Only there were already a knitting club AND a scrapbooking club meeting in the library Wednesday night (this will NOT be a problem in the new building!), so we threw this party on Thursday night instead, which is okay, because to be perfectly honest I have this problem of thinking Read Across America day is actually March 3, anyway. Because I am the library's resident Literacy Nut, who actually thinks library programs ought to encourage reading in some fashion, I was going to Celebrate The Fun Side of Easy Reader Books.
After all, you uninitiated people, this is the gift Dr. Seuss gave to the world: making simple easy-to-read beginning books ACTUALLY FUN as opposed to banal.
I inherited this weird Being Creative thing from my mother. My mom CAN do a boring, simple party, with a cake that just looks like, you know, a cake, and most of the time she DOES. But every so often she'll decide something needs a THEME, and then she won't go halfway. Hense, the Castle party on my 9th birthday, in which the entire unfinished upstairs became a castle, there were costumes, the ICE CREAM was even castle-shaped, and I'm pretty sure this whole afternoon took at least two months to prepare. Then, other times, we'd do something totally random like make a birthday cake for Abraham Lincoln, with a pretzel log cabin on top. Then there was soon-to-be-Sam's baby shower, which was Children's Literature Themed. They DID serve Green Eggs and Ham there (and to tell the truth, this party edged the name "Sam" even CLOSER to the top of my possibilities list), and I wasn't about to pass THAT up for a Seuss-themed party, but I decided to take it a LITTLE bit farther:
Here you see the Green Eggs and Ham-- and, unlike my parents, I actually COLORED THE HAM GREEN TOO; as well as Blue Goo Tarts ("Here is lots of new blue goo now..."), which are actually vanilla pudding with a lot of food coloring. Sam helped me make everything involving food coloring, and enjoyed it very much.
But this is my crowning glory:
Because "THROUGH THREE CHEESE TREES, THREE FREE FLEAS FLEW." Everyone should build some Cheese Trees in their life. Behind the cheese trees, you'll see some Pink Ink Punch ("This one, I think, is called a Yink...." There's also a reference to Pink Ink in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, but it's not as interesting a one). It's frozen strawberries blended up with strawberry-kiwi juice and tonic water. It would have been pinker (and inkier) (and possibly tastier) with yogurt or vanilla ice cream, but because I was already serving cheese and pudding, it seemed like I wasn't leaving much for people who don't eat dairy (even worse for vegans who wouldn't eat the green eggs and ham, either), so I figured I'd keep it just a punch. It worked. There's also alphabet cookies for assembling your own words. This is the only bought-from-a-package food I offered, because I'm not THAT crazy.
I prepared for about 20 people, only to find out that 10 more people signed up YESTERDAY. This turned out all right, because some of the original signups didn't show, anyway, and we ended up with a group of 23 (and still had leftover food, so we're good). We gathered as a group first and discussed a bit about Dr. Seuss and what he did and what Easy Readers actually are, and then I said, "Okay, they call these Easy Readers. BUT ARE THEY REALLY?"
...and then we did a group reading of Fox In Socks. Volunteers (though occasionally, it was their CHILDREN who volunteered a grownup to read) took a page at a time to read out loud, COLD. The best part is, of course, that this is Fox In Socks, which means kids and grownups were on equal footing, reading this out loud! It developed into lots of laughter and spontaneous applause every time someone managed a particularly difficult section.
I had been GOING to show this very short video, of possibly the fastest reading of Fox in Socks in the history of the world, but I couldn't find the extention cord for the projector and the large-screen TV is now hidden behind a Large Pile of Boxes of Books for Moving, so I just offered the link to anyone who wanted to check it out at home.
Then we spread out to the various stations. There was a Food Station, of course. Then I had a book station, with a display of some of the more recent great easy readers we have for checking out, and bookmarks listing some great easy reader series and flyers about the Geisel Award winners.
Then I had two game stations: rhyming hopscotch, with short words which you then have to find a rhyme for instead of numbers:
And non-magnetic poetry made out of the Dolch Sight Words-- can YOU write an Easy Reader out of them?
After you assemble your sentences, you tape them to the screen behind the table. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the final results, but my enthusiastic and helpful patrons took it down during cleanup before I could get to that.
I feel like I needed some more game stations, but we really didn't have space, let alone ideas!
But everyone went out the door raving to me and to the people at the front desk about what a great time they'd had, so, chalk up another success on the list of Awesome Stuff That Happens @Your Library!