SRP 2017 - week 5

Self-made Ice Cream:
Picked a recipe that did not require heating/boiling any of the ingredients. (with only a microwave as a source of heat, we had limited options)
Notice the plastic coating over the floor. We had no idea what to expect from this project so we tried to prepare for the worst.

Rebecca pre-measured milk into sandwich bags. Scooped sugar into buckets for kids to measure their own. Librarians offered vanilla, strawberry or cinnamon flavoring.

We carefully instructed children to close their sandwich bags and place them inside a gallon freezer bag. Then add salt. We settled on using softener salt crystals. It was the cheapest in the quantity we needed.

Roughly 15 pounds of ice was scooped onto the kid's bags. More instruction to thoroughly seal bags.
Then SHAKE! Except for very chilly hands, the kids enjoyed that part. Five to ten minutes later, remove sandwich bag, wipe outside of it with napkin and eat.

'school' kids left to reach Madison Elementary in time for dismissal, but we still had 15 minutes of SRP. I created two identical grids on our carpet with a combination of duct tape and masking tape. Draped book displays with tablecloths and rolled them in between the grids.

Voila! Life-size Battleship. So much fun for children and adults!

My game had the added bonus of being fun to pull apart.

The children each left with a belly full of ice-cream and a magnet full of Frontier Bank.

SRP 2017 - week 4

The LEGO guy was an hour of kids and legos. The kids enjoyed themselves and it was super easy to clean up. (Do not be fooled by the picture, the LEGO guy is a real, live grown-up)

The Lego guy presented on the Friday we also had Tornado warnings all across our state. Every child and Lego made it home safely.
The children were back by June 21 for more Lego fun. It was hot outside, but not dangerously so. I split the 44 children into three teams to play Lego relay.

Each child had a turn to run across the Auditorium parking lot and add a lego to their teams tower. A simple game that appealed to all ages. Rebecca pre-sorted Legos to create an equal, and therefore fair, 'supply bucket' for each team.
After running around outside we came in for some free-build time. Library staff set up tables and piled on the Legos.

We were down one staff person this week so Legos was the perfect choice to make our lives easier.
Very little prep work or clean-up.
I now have no memory of what we served as a snack or what story I read to the group. Both snack and story did happen, I am sure. I simply did not store the info in mind.
note: we borrowed my brother, Ben's, Legos as well as an extensive collection from Carol Robertson at the Madison County Museum. Thank you, to you both!

2017 SRP - week 3

For every week of physical building we make a correlation with a less tangible thing that when created/invented contributed to a better world. During our egg drop challenge we mentioned life preservers, airbags etc.

Can a child keep an egg safe from all harm? Even when an adult drops it from a 9 foot ladder?
We learned our lesson and spread plastic tablecloths over our floor before giving eggs to children.

We simply do not have many pictures of our adventures this week. We grabbed everything we could think of from our supply cupboards to give the children a variety of options. Rebecca set up the ladder in the City Auditorium parking lot. We did spread a table cloth on the ground to make clean-up easier.

Survival rates varied. All enjoyed the challenge.

Funny story: Outside, when children were lining up to have their egg tested by the drop, one little girl asked us to drop an egg with no protection. Just an egg. To see what would happen. We did. It broke.

2017 SRP - week 2

Our theme Build a Better World leaves us with many options. We chose for week two to focus on a physical building challenge. Construct a structure using marshmallows, toothpicks and straws.

A lot less prep this week. Rebecca separated our supplies into equal parts for every team. We wrapped our Louis L'Amour titles in waxed paper to provide equal bases for structures.

Each team was challenged to build a structure spanning from one stack of Louis L'Amour to another.

Our only problem was running out of time when a structure refused to collapse during our weight test. We ran out of rubber aliens and legos to weigh down the egg carton.

We had intended to give the children time to 'free build' from their own imaginations. We sent them home with a punching balloon printed to look like a globe.

2017 SRP - week 1

Play-dough
yes, play-dough
in the library
over 30 children under 15 years of age MAKING play-dough inside my library
I am crazy.
We picked a simple recipe: flour, salt, water, oil, food coloring

We (Intern Rebecca) pre-measured the salt into bowls. Each child measured their flour from ice cream buckets into their bowl. I added oil, not allowing children to touch the greasy substance.(While I am undoubtedly crazy, I am not stupid.) A few drops of food coloring and children began mixing with their hands.
 
Many of them had to make adjustments ( more flour, more water ) but everyone had workable playdough after several minutes of kneading.

We talked through each step in our prep work. What containers we would use to serve the ingredients, what order they should be added, measurements of ingredients... you get the idea. Covering the tables with wax paper was dumb :) Our tables are wipe-able. The carpet is not.
With all of our experience and planning, we still did not think of everything.

 Long story short: 1.5 hours of clean-up. We survived.

2017 SRP - info

My record keeping leaves a little ( a lot ) to be desired. I know this. I acknowledge this. So...
I know I will want a record of what we have done this year for Summer Reading Program at the library.
Madison Public Library Summer Reading Program sponsored by Frontier Bank, member FDIC


Wednesdays 2-3 pm Summer Reading Program meetings
Spanning 8 wks including Kick-off and Prize drawing.(wrap-up) Kick off being the first Wednesday after last day of school for public elementary.
One major change in 2017: We tracked reading this year by time instead of number of pages/books. 30 minutes of reading is one ticket. Each ticket can be entered into raffle for one of six grand prizes. Two of our best readers had read 50 hours by week three! Grand prizes for 2017 are: Pool bag, RC Spider, Bluetooth Headphones, RC Truck, 20" Bicycle, Samsung Galaxy 7" tablet.

Most summers we have a special guest or presenter at some point during the summer. (2016 we hosted a concert featuring Jack and Kitty for our kick-off)

Summer is chaos for my library. As evidenced by my disheveled shelves.
When I think of other pertinent info I will add it in the comments.