Gaming Days

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention gaming days, since they have become a staple of my teen programs. My supervisor was hesitant to do them because they have nothing to do with a library, but has since changed her mind.

This summer we did our first gaming day, and it was a HUGE success. We had 50 or so people show up for our program. Our gaming days since then haven't had nearly the response, but since I haven't done as much advertisement (as they've been a part of our weekly teen programs), it wasn't really expected. We have not as of yet done anything with board or card games - just video, but here are some tips and tricks I've learned.

1. Have a snack. Sure video games are fun enough on their own - when you're the person playing. When you're one of the ones stuck watching (even if only for a short time), it's good to have something to snack on. My library has them for free. Generally we do chips and sodas, but this last time we had several boxes of cereal and some milk and it was a great hit. My friend Mary works for a library, and when they do gaming events, they charge for snacks. However, the money from this goes into a scholarship fund that they have for their Teen Friends, so it evens out.

2. Ideally, your gaming event will be several hours long, but it really depends on group size. The way my schedule is right now, I can only do mine for an hour (not including setting up/taking down equipment). The first one we did was 2 or 2 1/2 hrs long, which was great - of course that was the one with 50 people. The ones I've done lately have averaged about 10, so an hour is sufficient.

3. Here is a list of games that ALWAYS appear to be a hit:
A. Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour are ideal because up to four people can play at one time. If you have just Guitar Hero, try to get 2 guitars, because you can at least challenge against the other person and add some competition to the mix.

B. Dance Dance Revolution. This is one that is two player, and involves a lot of moving so make sure you have the room. It's dancing on pads and following the arrows.

C. Super Smash Brothers. Every time I watch this game, I have no idea what's going on. It's just sensory overload. Basically, it's a just fighting game. You can have up to four people fighting at once, or you can have the computer make up for the other players if less people are playing.

D. Nintendo Wii. Ok - not a game, but Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Music are all good games that you can get for the Wii. Depending on the game, up to 4 people can play. This is an ideal game if you have tweens. This is another game that requires a lot of moving around, so make sure you have plenty of room so someone doesn't get hit.

E. Old school Nintendo. I was really excited when one of my teens brought this the last time, but we weren't able to play it. The projector I was working didn't have the old school cable hookup, and he only brought one controller anyway. However, if it had worked out, I'm sure they would've loved playing it.

4. It's always a good idea to have multiple tvs with games set up. I can't imagine a more boring time than if there was only one TV set up with one game. Snoozeville. If you have multiple games set up, there are more chances for teens to play and less waiting around. Plus, they can switch it up instead of playing the same game over and over.

There are other people who probably have more experience with gaming than I have, but here's what I know. I hope it helps out someone.

Marble Magnets

With the start of a new school year came new projects. I would love to do recycled materials forever, but there's only so many projects you can do before it gets old.

Pretty much the only craft project that caught my eye in this book I was sent was marble magnets. These cute, little funky things have been the hit of everyone that has seen them. They're made using those glass marbles that people put in the bottom of vases - they're flat on one side, and curved on the other, and simple as all get out to make.

Take some magazines (or old book/music/movie catalogs - ALA Graphics is a good one), and find and image you want. Next, take the marble and place it over the image and trace around it. Cut the image out, and then decoupage it onto the flat side of the marble so the image is showing through the curved side. To decoupage, mix a little water with white glue. Apply glue to marble, and then affix image. Apply several layers of white glue on top of image, allowing for layers to dry inbetween applications. This will ensure the image stays stuck to the marble. Then attach a magnet on the back of the marble and bob's your uncle - you're done! (Try to find some small, but strong magnets. I used flat sheet magnets, and as a result, my awesome magnets are really for decoration only).

My teens really had a good time with it, and they have fun talking and fighting over the pictures they're going to use. Plus it gave them a great idea for Christmas presents they could make themselves. This is a super easy craft with great results. I highly recommend it to anyone!

Plastic Flowers

Further in my quest in all things recyclable, I turned to plastic bottles. I had seen plastic flowers online (along with ones made of egg cartons), and decided to try my hand at it.


It's fairly straightforward. Find a clean plastic bottle, and cut it into a flower shape. The top two flowers in my pictures are a couple of my early prototypes. The red is made from the top
of a water bottle - I just made the neck of the bottle the base of the flower and then cut the bottle in half. I then cut down to the neck, making petal shapes. The blue flower is made using the base of the bottle. There are a lot of bottles that have a natural 5 petal pattern at the bottom. I just cut the bottle in half, and then followed the "natural" already made lines to make a flower shape. Both of these flowers were painted with tempera, though it is a bit messy and difficult to use. I also hadn't figured out anything to do with them. Because of the way they were made, I couldn't use it for jewelry. I could've tried attatching them to pipe cleaners to make a stem.


The other blue flower was made using a different method. I took a larger bottle - 2 liter (the other two were made using water bottles or small soda bottles), and cut flat flower shapes out of the main body of the bottle. I then colored them with sharpies, which is cleaner and gives a translucent color, and glued a couple of layers together. I then added a little glitter and a rhinestone, slapped a pin on the back - and voila recycled accessory!

The teens seemed to like this well enough. Depending on the thickness of the plastic, it can be a bit hard to cut sometimes. Cheap water bottles are the easiest to cut.

Computer disk notebooks

I found these babies over at Lexacat's blog. They are super easy to make, and now that almost no one uses these anymore, you should be able to find plenty of them in your house or library.

It's really simple. All you have to do cut paper into 3.5" squares, punch holes, and put the whole thing together with loose leaf notebook rings, key rings, or some other metal loop. And if you say, "But my disks don't have two holes!", look again. Most have a sliding lock. If you slide that down or over, you should see another hole there. There are some disks that do have only one hole though. I also used the stickers that come with most disks to decorate my notebooks.

The teens really lived this craft. It was easy for them to do, and it allowed them to personalize it and really be creative and make it their own.

Rubber band jewelry

Now you may be thinking to yourself "Yeah, yeah - we've seen rubber band jewelry before. It's nothing special." And for the most part I would agree. The rubber band jewelry featured in a particular book my library was sent was abysmal (along with most of the other crafts in the book). However, in my journeys online I found this via Junk Jewelry blog and was inspired. So I pulled out my needles, thread, and seeds beads, and after an hour or two of twisting and turning the rubber bands, and trying different things out, I decided I had an awesome craft.

I made a string of examples of some of the different things you could do with the medium. Unfortunately, it was all for naught. The teens had a really difficult time holding the rubber bands in the right shape while they poked the needle through, so most ended up looking nothing like the pics I've posted. Some took the bands and cut them open into long strips and strung them on that way. All in all, I don't know that this is something I'd repeat again. I'm definitely interested in doing other jewelry things with them, but I would only do this particular one if I had a really artsy/crafty group I knew could handle this.

Teen Junk

This is my first year doing teen/tween programs after school (I had done them during the summers in the past), and we started out by only doing six weeks toward the end of the school year. I called the program "Teen Junk" because it was all about making things out of recycled materials. I had done weeks of searching online to find great projects for teens, and most of them focused on recycling. In this first bit I'll show you the different crafts we did, the difficulties with them, the response I got, etc.

The first craft we did (and one of the ones that got the most response out of people who saw it) was the orange juice carton wallet/coin purse. It's a fairly simple craft to do, and really cool to boot! I think it's a great alternative to the duct tape wallet. To the right or above are the images of the one I made. If you follow the link above, it will tell you how to make one. One of the difficulties I had with this was that the cardboard was very hard for the teens to fold, and I ended up having to do the accordion folds on most of the wallets. Also, it's a good idea to have a few extra cartons on hand, just in case someone messes up, because there's really no fixing this if you trace the pattern incorrectly or cut a piece off.

The teens really liked this one, but like I said, there were difficulties.

Revamp

Ok, so it may be a little early for a revamp, but I had a change of heart. This may end up still being a blog where I post entries from writing prompts and stuff I do with my teens online (which hasn't started yet, but it might), but since it has become abundantly clear that there is a total lack of good sites with ideas for teen library programming, I've decided to make my own. That, and I think my ideas are totally rad and need to be shared with the internets. If this site generates enough interest and/or I run out of my own ideas, I'm sure I'll need guest bloggers. So if you're interested in posting things on here, drop me line or post a comment and we'll talk (coffee talk - 555-4444)

And so dear friends, let the blogging commence!

Welcome!

This is going to be our blog!

We've signed up for myspace and facebook, but we wanted this blog too! Our idea is that we will issue challenges (either weekly or monthly) about writing poems or using picture generators, and you guys will email us the results that we will then post here! Of course, we'll also use it to post programs and events, but we want this to be a blog for everyone!

Keep watch - we'll be updating often!