Frenzy!

Today was a hectic day! First thing in the morning, I did a little bit of work on Little Tykes for next week and then Suzanne and I headed off to the park for the first Little Tykes program.

Suzanne had planned and was running this one so I wasn't too nervous. However, when we got there, the kids (and counselors) were nowhere to be found. That was a bit worrisome. We finally tracked them down and it became clear that they had not been expecting us at all. Apparently, they had us written down as coming on Thursdays, despite the fact that Suzanne and I had both emailed the director and confirmed Tuesday mornings. That was a bit stressful, but I'm glad Suzanne was there to handle it. They were surprised but accommodating and I'm sure I would have been fine on my own, but it was nice to have two of us there to confirm that we were in fact supposed to be there.

Anyway, after we got it all straightened out, Suzanne went into the program. We had nine kids between the ages of three and five and two counselors. We sang a song, then read a book, then did a fingerplay. Then we played with the parachute, read another story, drew some bugs and sang another song. Finally, we said goodbye and Suzanne and I headed back to the library.

My feelings about the whole thing are mixed. I know they are preschoolers and, thus, a very forgiving audience, but I still can't help but feel nervous for next week when I do this all on my own. I plan on doing the same song for opening every week so that the kids can really get to know it and feel comfortable with it and can get the feeling that they've mastered something. I might also try to do a similar thing with closing - pick one song and sing it every week with them at the end. The books went over rather well - I will have to try to make all my stories interactive because the kids really like that. The kids also really loved the fingerplay which is something that I had been really hesitant about before so I might have to rethink my position on that. I had been all about the parachute beforehand because Suzanne told me how much they love it. However, after seeing it in action, I'm not sure I want to go for it. It seemed to get the kids a little too high-strung for the next thing. The drawing went well for the most part - of course, the kids weren't terribly good at it and following directions was not their strong point but they seemed to have fun with it. Clearly, I won't be able to do anything more complex than that in terms of crafts with them so I'll have to figure that out.

Back at the library, I worked a bit more on Little Tykes planning for next week, then took my break. When I got back from that, Suzanne and I set up for the teen program, button-making. This was much better attended than I expected it to be and it went pretty smoothly. The kids got the hang of it really quickly so it almost didn't seem necessary for us to be there but, of course, we still needed to supervise. Suzanne told me to make sure that any library I work at in the future has a button-maker because it's an easy, fun craft that kids love and she uses it to make buttons all the time. It's also not terribly messy so that's good too. We picked up afterwards and then I pulled some books for Suzanne for the next program. I helped her set up the room for that as well. Again, I had a little bit of time to work on Little Tykes but then Suzanne poked her head out of the program room and asked for my help so I stepped in to assist.

Suzanne was having Boys Adventure Club, talking about pirates. She had already done a PowerPoint with information and the boys were working on making their own pirate flags. She had 24 boys in there all by herself! I helped clean up after the pirate flags and then helped them with making pirate ships. A lot of the kids wanted to keep their pirate ships so I helped try to dry them off for bringing home. What I learned from this program - never have 24 boys all on your own! Suzanne definitely needed a helper! Also, I like the idea of having separate programs for boys and girls but, before I went in to help, I definitely heard a few girls who wished they could participate as well. Suzanne told me that they didn't really enforce the segregation; this program just happened to fill up. Another thing I noticed about this program was that the older kids really seemed to like helping the younger kids; they just needed a bit more direction on how best to do so. This is definitely helpful if you're by yourself with this many kids, or even if there are only a few adults helping.

After we cleaned up from that program, I had just a little more time to work on Little Tykes planning. I imagine I'll have more time on Friday to polish up my plans. Today was hectic but good. I felt like we got a lot done and had great attendance so yay for the library! I also feel like I'm getting a lot of ideas to hold on to for use in my own career. I think this is turning out to be even better than I expected!