busy as a bee

oh, i am so busy with my clever cleverness. how can you stand to be in the presence of such greatness?

summer reading is upon us and let me tell you that all too often the fun is sucked out of summer reading when you have to "perform" and get high "numbers." number schmumbers. i'm more interested in facts and actions than numbers.

but here is the loophole that i am enjoying ... the powers that be come up with a number that they feel each branch should hit. this number is based on the number of registrations the branch got last summer. now, we were closed last summer. miraculously, i was still able to get kids to sign up for the summer reading program. but since we were closed our numbers were very low. so i've been told that we have already surpassed our number requirement for this summer. and summer has barely started!

so no need for little old me to worry about such useless things as statistics. i am free to concentrate on important things, like actually creating a fun and enriching summer reading program. yay!

so here's what we have brewing:

All About Butterflies - as i mentioned before, the children and i will be raising caterpillars and then releasing them into the wilds of the hood when they become butterflies. today we had our first butterfly meeting in which we discussed the butterfly life cycle and talked about proper caterpillar care, ie do not shake your caterpillar. then we colored in pictures of caterpillars and butterflies and decorated them with glitter glue. glitter glue! so much neater than regular glitter!

Indoor Playground - this week i went to a really interesting meeting about the importance of play. it was fascinating. all about how kids are losing their imaginations and their ability to think and reason because they are being robbed of their playtime. so i came up with this idea to play outdoor games inside. we will make masking tape hopscotch boards, play soda bottle bowling, etc etc. i've ordered several books on school yard games and i'm sure i can think of one activity per week for this. oh i am so brilliant.

Book Buddies - now, i will not try to take credit for coming up with the idea of book buddies. but i have this one teen who is really great (he wrote the Welcome to the Library section of the newsletter) and when he saw that i had story times on the summer calendar he asked if he could read to the kids. and i said, "that would be awesome. but i do the storytimes." but i told him i would figure something out. then i quickly made up a book buddy flyer and decided that we will have older kids read to the younger kids as part of the Jr. Summer Reading Club (grades K-3). then i showed him the flyer and he got all excited that i took his idea seriously and implemented it so quickly.
damned i'm good.