Winter Olympics Program

Librarian-students all had a chance to create/report out a program they developed as a final project. Each considered the goals of the program, format (active, passive), how much time/money it might take and described how it was or would be done. Amanda from IN shared this idea.

The "Library Winter Olympics 2014" is active program that was part of a once a month series called "Kid Connection".  The series is held at both branches once each month.  This program is geared for school aged children, and is held at 4:00 at in the afternoon on a Thursday at one branch. We used to hold this program in the evening at 6:30, but we slowly started losing families. 

In this community, families evenings are too busy with the activities they are involved in, such as scouts, sports, dance, etc.  We changed the time to after school, but before the evening events get started.  This has appeared to be helpful for families.  At the other branch we hold it at 6:00.  This seems to work well there.  It is a very isolated community with not much to do.  The library tends to be similar to a community center.

This program usually lasts about 45 minutes.  In addition to the books I was reading, I pulled books about winter sports for them to look at and check out if they wanted to.  This program probably took a total of 20 minutes to plan.  I read a magazine article that gave me the idea for the program, so some of the activity ideas and books ideas were "borrowed" from this.  I also had a couple of book ideas in my "arsenal".  I was the only staff member working this program and I might have spent $3 on paper plate $5 on a snack and drink  We had all the other supplies on hand. 

As families began to arrive there were three activity stations set up.  There was a "snowball toss" where they were to toss cotton balls into rings set up at different distances.  There was an Olympic Ring craft where the kids made their own "Olympic Rings" out of pipe cleaners of the according colors.  Finally there was "Ice" skating races.  We used paper plates as our ice skates and kids (and adults) raced each other around our "track" by scooting on the paper plates.  This was definitely their favorite activity.  There were parents racing their kids, siblings racing each other and kids who had never met each other racing each other.  Even kids who didn't seem interested in the program were drawn to this activity!  They really enjoyed the snow ball toss too. 

After about 20-25 minutes of activity stations, we moved to the carpet to read.  I also had (non-fiction) books about winter sports such as curling, ice skating, snow boarding, down hill skiing, etc. on display.  I read "Dream Big, Little Pig" by Kristi Yamaguchi, "Ten on the Sled" by Kim Norman, and "Mice on Ice" by Rebecca Emberley.  These books were definitely geared more for the younger school aged crowd (Kindergarten and first grade with some preschool siblings thrown in), which is what I tend to get at this program.  After we were done reading, we ate our snack and talked about the different type Olympic events that we had been watching on T.V. and which were our favorites and which ones we would like to try.  This program is was a very hands on program, the kids were able to move from station to station as they would like.  

Photo courtesy of Pixabay