Eleven hours...

Tuesday I worked an eleven hour day at Mooresville. Crazy? Yes, probably. But I have a reason! At the beginning of the summer when I looked over the schedule, I saw this family program, Silly Safaris, on July 13th, and I really wanted to see it. So I planned to work noon to eight (because the program was at six-thirty). Well, then Suzanne tells me about the Little Tykes every Tuesday so I have to come in at nine. I still wanted to see the Silly Safaris (because I hadn't seen a family program yet, aside from the kickoff carnival), plus Suzanne was out for her tonsillectomy so it's not like the extra help wouldn't be appreciated. Hence, my eleven hour day.

So, to begin the morning, I came in and got everything ready for Little Tykes. Then I headed over to the park. We talked about things that go. Jaymi didn't get my music loaded on to the iPod so I made the kids sing a capella. We did our opening, then read an alphabet book with transportation words. I taught them a lot of new vocabulary with this book. Then, we sang "Wheels on the Bus" and read the much-anticipated train book (they had been clamoring for it ever since they saw me put it out). After that, we tried to play a game. Now, this game was unfamiliar to me but Jaymi told me about it and I found rules online. It's supposed to be a sort of team-building camp activity. It's called "Ships and Sailors." I modified the rules I found a little bit and decided to eliminate the team-building aspect because I thought the kids might be too young to understand how to make teams quickly enough. So I went over the actions briefly and we got started. It did not go that well. Even with my modifications, I think they game would have been better suited for an older crowd. These kids were too young to understand how everything was supposed to work and were not so great at following the directions. After ending the game with a "shark attack," I headed out.

Back at the library, I set up the program room for my afternoon teen program. I had a bit of difficulty because there was a meeting in the community room and I needed to get some equipment from the closet in there. So I waited it out and eventually just had to sneak in. I got everything set up with no problems and then took my lunch break. When I came back from lunch, I finished setting up the room and waited for the teens to arrive. I had about ten kids eventually. We watched the new "Alice in Wonderland." We were supposed to watch "Percy Jackson" but the rights would have cost the library an additional five hundred dollars (since the studio wasn't covered by the library's license). I had a bit of a fail when I couldn't get the microwave to work (for popcorn, of course) but we saved the day by using the staff room microwave. We also had candy and juice. Everyone seemed to enjoy the movie. I had a little bit of time in the afternoon to work on the shelf labels, so I did that in between cleaning up the program room and helping Jaymi set up the community room. I took another dinner break and then Jaymi and I got everything ready for Silly Safaris.

Silly Safaris started at six thirty. We had about a hundred people show up. Silly Safaris is a local group that puts on an animal show for kids. Our presenter was Coyote Chris, who, disappointingly, did not bring a coyote. But he was fantastic. He was great with the kids, excellent at performing and brought a nice variety of animals for everyone to enjoy. He had a lot of the kids participate throughout the show and did really well with them. There were a couple things that he maybe needed to enforce more (such as making sure the kids stayed seated; there were a couple of children who kept standing and he sort of just ignored them after the first few times), but overall, I thought it was a fantastic program. At the end, each child got the opportunity to pet a few of the animals he'd brought in and I tried to snap pictures of each one. A very successful family program, I think. We cleaned up the community room briefly, then did closing procedures and my very long day came to a close. I had a great time doing a little of everything on Tuesday and it gave me ideas for the future. I sort of feel like a sponge, just absorbing everything I see here for use in the future. Obviously, I think this is a great thing!