Hello! Have You Missed Me?

Hi! Sorry for the radio silence for the past few weeks. Work has been busy and so when my scheduled posts ran out, I couldn't seem to find the time to get anymore scheduled. 

In person indoor storytime started back at all my libraries in April. I ran a seven week session from the first week of April until the week before Memorial Day. This was the first time I'd done that long a stretch of storytime since last summer. It was the first time storytime had been indoor since March 2020. If you're interested, my spring themes were frogs, eggs, things that go, poetry (spring), ice cream, gardens, and ninjas. 

I've been hard at work planning my summer events. My state is a member of the Collaborative Summer Library Program and 2022's theme is oceanography and the slogan is "Oceans of Possibilities." Reminds me a little of the 2010 theme ("Make a Splash; Read!" and "Make Waves at Your Library") which was coincidentally my first summer reading program. 

I'll be running a six week session (3 weeks in June and 3 weeks in July) of storytime for ages 0-6 followed by events for ages 7-12. There will be monthly contests and scavenger hunts in June, July, and August as well as bimonthly teen events during those months. I'll also be running mini weekly scavenger hunts during my six week session. 

My themes for storytime and the older events are beach, mermaids, fish (with an emphasis on sharks), boats, pirates, and ocean animals. I'm working on narrowing down my books as you can see from the above photo, creating take home activity packets for each group and selecting a game of craft for the older events. My monthly scavenger hunt themes are mermaids and friends, sharks, and narwhals. The monthly contests are an ocean Lego contest, an ocean animal photo contest (á la a stuffed animal sleepover photo), and an ocean themed coloring contest. The contests are for all ages including adults. The teen events are animated ocean movie night, Japanese culture night (a reboot of an event I hosted in 2011 for the "One World, Many Stories" and "You Are Here" slogans), shark week party, ocean paint and craft night, ocean team trivia night, and live action ocean movie night.

Look for posts next week about ocean poetry to use for summer events and flannel board activities for various ocean themes.