Mini Masters of Library Science

We had so much fun at this week's Mini Masters of Library Science program! I can't take all of the credit- I got a lot of my ideas from Tales for the Tiny (including the file for the fabulous diplomas), Hafuboti, and Miss Meg's Storytime. I borrowed ideas from each one, added a few elements, and tweeked until I thought it would work for our patrons.


And it did! I set up six stations (pictures below) and each kid got a booklet to stamp at each station. After they collected all six stamps they could collect their diplomas! We had about 20 kids (PreK-4th grade) stay for 30-60 minutes depending on attention span and everybody finished. It was a little hectic (especially at our circulation station) so I could not have done it without three fabulous teen volunteers. I chose to hold the program during National Library week, but it could really be done any time of year. I think everybody had a lot of fun and left with a little more knowledge of the library and what the librarians do every day. Here's how it was set up:

"Locating Items" was our scavenger hunt station. Kids could choose from green level (easy), yellow level (medium), or hard level (red) and find items throughout the children's section. Some easy items were things like a picture book or a block from the play room, but harder items were things like a new chapter book or a non fiction poetry book. This was a fan favorite, for sure!

Programming was a lot of fun. Kids could sing a song, play a little mouse game, or read a story to their grown-ups or friends.

Readers advisory had different levels of challenge, like the scavenger hunt. Easy questions were things like "Do you have any books about dogs?" or "I'd like a book with trains" and harder questions were things like "I want a scary chapter book" or "Do you have any books by the same author as Elephant & Piggie?"

Sorting also had three levels- easy meant sorting early readers by the color of their spine stickers, medium meant putting picture books in alphabetical order, and hard meant organizing by Dewey number.

The recommend a book station was also popular- kids could write or draw about their favorite books and their recommendations are currently displayed on one of our bookshelf end caps.

I didn't manage to get a snapshot of the circulation station because it looked like a tornado hit it almost instantly. Easy challengers simply checked in books (which I had checked out on our department's library card), medium challengers' items had a few holds placed on them, and hard challengers' items may have had several things wrong- holds, missing DVDs, etc. This is the only station which required constant librarian supervision (and at one point, a second librarian & computer).

Our diploma station (featuring fancy certificate paper from who knows when, whose partial pack actually inspired this whole program)

Our teen volunteers participating in story time!

Over all, this program went really well and I think it would be fun to do again for the families who couldn't make it this time. If anybody at all would like the files I made for the stations, diplomas, or stamp books, please just leave a comment. I would love to pass them along!