We're two weeks in over here and holding up strong! These first two weeks of the summer were the most stressful of the summer for me personally, with launching and attending our first week of #instaLibrary outreach sites. Now that I've turned that over to my staff, I hope the rest of the summer will be relatively easy...!
Our director challenged us to sign up 5% of our service population for the Summer Reading Club (which almost doubled past signups) and we're getting closer to our goal each day. We still have about 1000 signups needed (children, teens, or adults) to reach our goal, but we can do it!
We've had lots and lots of kids coming in for their along-the-way prizes, which actually surprised me. I thought for sure most families would wait until the end and get everything at once, but it's been great to see everyone visiting the library multiple times to collect their prizes. We're using our Science Activity Packs for the along-the-way prizes and luckily have actually had a bunch of teen volunteers coming in this summer, so we have them work on whatever we're running shortest on.
The Engineering Table continues to be a lot of fun for everyone. This week I put out cut-up pool noodles (which were NOT EASY to cut up with scissors... if I was doing this over I would find something else to use!).
One kind of surprise hit has been our weekly Lego Challenge. Last Monday was our first one of the summer and we got WAY MORE attendance than we ever had with our weekly Lego Club. A couple key differences:
1. Marketing. Calling it a "Lego Challenge" instead of a "Lego Club" appeals more widely to our kids and families. Even though we're not really doing anything super different, kids love to be challenged and see what they can come up with.
2. We're setting it up out in the department instead of in one of our meeting rooms. This not only makes it hopefully a little easier to run (since the staff person on desk can supervise instead of having to schedule an additional staff person to run it), but it makes it way more visible. Families that just happen to be visiting the library are more apt to join in since it's very easy to see that something is going on.
I had added that program as an easy weekly evening program, just so we had SOMETHING to offer folks in the evening. But the first week was a hit, so I'm excited to see what the rest of the summer will bring. More on that program later. ;)
And of course we are reading, too, this summer!
Has your Summer Reading Club started yet? How's it going??