A Year (Almost) of Programming for Homeschoolers

I have posted before about our homeschool program, Fantastic Friday. We've just finished up our second year of offering this program, so I wanted to share a little bit about what we've been doing all year. This continues to be a great program for us. We've had great attendance from the start and we're seeing a lot of the same people coming every month.

Here's what we did in 2011:

• January - Let It Snow! A storytime about snow and a snowman craft. 
• February - Chinese New Year. We did a stir-fry cooking demonstration and let them all taste. A local Chinese restaurant donated chopsticks!
• March - Seeds & Growing Things. We shared some books about seeds and growing things and then each child got to plant their own seed.
• April - Poetry. For the younger kids, we did a poetry storytime. For the older kids, we made book spine poems.
• May - We did a storytime and craft for the younger kids. For the older kids, we did a book chat and I booktalked a bunch of awesome books that they might like for Summer Reading.
• June, July, and August - We took a break from Fantastic Friday because we were offering so many awesome programs at all times of the day. 
• September - Back to Homeschool Party! This was a great way to kick off our homeschool year and bring our audience back in. 
• October - Costume party and Trick-or-Treat around the library. 
• November - Pretzel-making. (I am lucky to have an excellent and willing chef amongst my staff!)
• December - Holidays Around the World. Three different craft stations with information about holidays from three different countries. 

Due to an incredibly overwhelming fall and the large number of programs we planned for winter break, we're taking a break from in-house programming in January. The weather is very iffy and people in our area get very skittish about driving conditions. We'll start back up in February with a Black History Month program at the Carnegie Center for Art and History. I know I want to do a database workshop for the older kids at some point. And I'd like to continue my tradition of doing booktalks for the older kids in May to get them excited about Summer Reading. I think we'll probably again take a summer break and then repeat our Back to Homeschool Party in September. Other than that, we'll see where the year takes us!