Saturday, February 12, 2011

This week at the library; or, Freezing temps, vomit, and frazzled librarians!

This week has continued the panicked craziness I've been in for the past month. I'm usually very ahead with things, but somehow I just can't seem to get everything done! Maybe because I'm trying to plan programs through the end of the year all at once...but I kind of have to, because of budgeting. Deep breaths, deep breaths...

Our Make it and Take it craft was paper beads (or bangles). I got this from Laura Martin's Recycled Crafts Box. Our staff donated old wrapping paper and the kids cut it up, spread it with glue, and rolled it over straws (left over from another project). Some of the younger kids had trouble rolling tightly, but they all had fun anyways.

We found our missing Wii controller! I totally forgot to look inside the steering wheel when we were searching earlier, and there it was. Once again, I had no one at book club )-: I know at least 3 kids checked out the book, one of them listened to at least part of it, b/c I talked to him about it and I'm pretty sure one of the other girls read it. Oh well. We had such a nice start last year...maybe I should go back to just reading adventure fantasy and not try anything different! Or maybe it's just too cold to come out at night and I'll get more people when the weather's nicer.

Another broken window! We have very tall windows in our children's area and I was really upset to discover one was badly cracked - this happened last summer and it was EXPENSIVE. Plus, the crack is growing, probably due to the weather, but it's kinda nerve wracking...

I made a few changes for Lego Building Club. I put all the guys in a bucket and told the kids they could only have 2 each. I also set aside all the boards and made sure they only took one. I was hoping this would encourage them to build more instead of just creating scenes with the guys - or the first couple kids grabbing all the guys - and it seems to have worked. The giant box of wheels I bought with donation money was the big deal this week and everyone made cars. I made a donation jar for our after school programs and so far we have $18! I also reorganized the layout of the boxes of Legos.

We had two kids throw up this week, one of them unfortunately on our train table...we're now short a couple pieces of track, as I was not in the mood to try scrubbing vomit off wooden tracks. We have lots of track. A few pieces more or less won't matter.

Unexpectedly, I had a large group for preschool storytime - 15 and all girls! We were doing cats, so we read Viviane Schwarz's books, which are absolute favorites of mine and the kids - There are cats in this book and There are no cats in this book. In between, we read Kaye Umansky's I don't like Gloria! and Kitten's spring by Eugenie Fernandes, which is a little young for this crowd, but they really like finding the kitten and other animals in the pictures. We made cat faces with paper plates, ribbon/pipe cleaners for whiskers, and some paper triangles I found at the last minute.

No one was interested in hanging out in the storyroom Thursday afternoon. They decided to completely cover the Art Board in graffiti. I still live in hope that someone will actually draw on it, instead of writing how much they love Justin Bieber and then downhill from there. I had to strip it for inappropriate language. Le sigh. On the other hand, it concentrates all the graffiti in one place!

I subbed for toddler storytime on Friday morning and the 30+ kids and parents were very forgiving - I used to work a lot with toddlers, but I don't anymore and it's really hard to flip back into toddler mode, especially when you are in the middle of your budget....

3 comments:

Anamaria (bookstogether) said...

Wait a minute, there's a There are NO Cats in this Book?! Where have I been! I'm going to go find it right away. Thanks!

Jennifer said...

Yes! It's the sequel! The cats are going out into the world...but it's a lot harden than they thought to get out of the book. They try puuuuushing, they try jumping, and finally they come up with the perfect solution...but they need your help!

Anamaria (bookstogether) said...

I'm so getting that book. We love those cats! Thank you!