1. We had a few special events, one of which being our annual Cookie House program.
It is offered throughout our library system and each library has one or two time slots for the program. It is a wildly popular program for everyone - we had over 200 people at ours!
Last year we had a buffet-style line that the families could go through for certain items. Everything that we had in limited supply we put in individual baggies. It created a lot of prep work for staff so I made some slight changes for this year's event.
This year, we put a few of the limited supply items in baggies but the everything else we put in bowls on the tables for kids to serve themselves 'family style'. We put all of their individual supplies at each table place-setting. It alleviated a lot of prep work from staff before the program and simplified planning for me!
The only note I would make about doing 'family style' for materials is that it is important to make it clear to the parents and children alike that the bowls on the table are to share with everyone. We had an issue at one of the tables when a child monopolized one of the bowls. But, otherwise, it was great!
2. This is also one of the months that I do a majority of training for our teen volunteers. We had several orientations with new volunteers as well as interviews.
The interviews are a new requirement but some of our programs require teens to lead them with varying levels of help from a staff member. The teens that are in charge of the programs need to have the skills and the commitment to do so. The interviews added a 'hoop' for them to jump through to test their commitment and were a great first interview experience for them.
3. We also spend our break month's cleaning and reorganizing. Sometimes, in the midst of a program session, after each week we just put stuff back where it fits or set it aside to deal with later. Well...this is later. So I have spent some of my time cleaning up from this past session.
I also have to organize our materials for the next session and prepare materials that we are going to use for crafts at our school-age programs. Needless to say, my hands are tired of all the cutting!
And, lastly, I am cleaning some of the items that our school-ager's handle on the regular. Since our amazing library assistant, Ms. Shelby, moved to a different library as she was hired as a librarian several month's back, I took over the teen-led Lego program she helped with. One our regular cleaning jobs is to clean the Lego's so I had Lego bathtime at my home this week before programs start back up next week.
So, it was definitely a non-programming month but it certainly was not a break! Now onward to another program session next week!
