8:40am - Arrive at library, put stuff away.
8:45a - Check email, work on a short article for the newsletter about upcoming holiday programs (Holidays in the Library and the Gingerbread House Workshop).
9:10a - Get my program room set up for Mother Goose on the Loose (baby storytime) and look over the materials I planned.
9:12a - Decide I don't like the book I chose for this week and pick out another. You can never go wrong with The Wheels on the Bus by Paul O. Zelinsky!
9:20a - Talk with one of my staff members about creating a story prop for our visits to local afterschool programs. She's great at figuring out how to make stuff.
9:25a - Continue getting ready for Mother Goose on the Loose. (Get my felts in order, pull a CD for intro and playtime music, set up book display, etc.)
9:45a - Read email from listservs and make a to-do list for today.
10:00a - Mother Goose on the Loose! Afterwards one of the moms tells me that her daughter has been talking about me at home. I stay out in the department after the program and play with the kids for a little longer... alas...
11:00a - Go back to the office and sort through some surveys that we've been handing out to help one of our local early childhood organizations.
11:10a - Practice Coyote's Crying Song for the staff in the office. I'm telling it for our homeschooler program later in the week. They like it!
11:20a - Take the surveys upstairs to mail.
11:25a - Clean up the program room from MGOL.
11:30a - Work on book order.
12:10p - Chat with Anthony Nava, a local Cherokee and Pascua Yaqui Indian, who brings me some information about the programs he offers. It's too late to book him for this November (we plan and publicize our programs at least a couple of months ahead of time), but I'd like to have him in the summer when we celebrate One World, Many Stories!
12:25p - Work on book order.
1:10p - Guess I'd better eat lunch, eh?
2:00p - Meet with the staff association (I'm the Vice President, which sounds more impressive than it really is... we're an association of four and we're all officers...). We're planning the library's holiday party, so we discuss food, door prizes, entertainment, invitations, etc.
2:45p - I leave with one of my staff members for a visit to one of our YMCA Afterschool programs. We've been visiting all the afterschool programs over the past couple of months and it has been great fun! Our after school programs at the library have not had great attendance, so we're trying this out and it's been much more successful!
3:05p - Arrive at school and do our program. We share stories for 15-25 minutes (length really depends on the kids - after sitting down at school all day they don't always want to sit and listen to many stories). Then we do a simple craft. Here's what we read:
'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey
Some Thanksgiving jokes from Let's Celebrate Thanksgiving by Connie Roop
Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard (the kids *love* this book! Even if they've already heard it, they love to hear it again. Which is good because I could read this one over and over and not get tired of it...)
Shark in the Park by Nick Sharratt
And then we pass out paper, crayons, and leaves and do leaf rubbings with the kids. Some of them have already done it (I say, "Great! Then you're an expert! Will you help your friends if they don't know how to do it?"), but many of them haven't. It's simple, not messy, cheap, and the kids can be creative with their choices of colors. I get leaves from the many, MANY different trees in my apartment complex to offer them lots of shape choices.
3:45p - We pack up and leave the school.
4:00p - We're back at the library and I leave a little early to make it to my choir rehearsal!
Just another day in the life...
