Saturday, September 27, 2014

This Week at the library; or, You blinked and missed it!

Making a dollhouse at Mad Scientists Club: Cardboard Engineering
What's going on, in my head and at the library
  • After I came back from the ALSC Institute last week, I took three days off. I cannot actually claim brilliant forethought for this, since I was originally going to continue on to visit family at home in Austin, and only ended up canceling the trip because of a mess up with the plane tickets and my family all having major life changes that meant they wouldn't actually be there. Anyways, I spent three days with a beautifully blank mind, cataloging and blogging my personal book collection and cleaning out my apartment. I finished! All 1,911 books! Woo!
  • I went back to work on Thursday and it was....busy. I planned the afternoon program and Friday morning program, removed the obscene drawing from the teen area (how did nobody notice...it was big and....whatever), checked to see if the surviving hamster was still alive (he was) tackled the stacks of new stuff on my desk, chatted with staff to find out how things went while I was gone, then Mad Scientists Club, then the grocery store to get snacks for Friday morning. Phew!
  • I was a little tense about MSC because I found out only 16 people came to Lego Club while I was gone - I have NEVER had that small a group. However, there was a scheduling snafu and the staff had to cram Lego Club into our small storytime room - I get a lot of my club attendance from people walking by and being invited in, so now I know how important that is - I had a good turnout for MSC, so it wasn't a OMG MY AFTER SCHOOL CLUBS ARE DYING WHYYYY situation.
  • I did my first We Explore Nature program Friday morning. I didn't expect a huge turnout - I'm really using this as a test ground for these programs and planning to move them to the afternoon and use them for outreach next year. 13 people came for the bulk of the program but I refuse to feel bad about it - they were an amazing audience. The three year old who knew a ridiculous amount of birds (there is nothing cuter than a three year old shouting "kamingos!") the 2 year old who had to come up and look carefully at every picture - it was awesome. Another group of about 7 people came in at the end to do the final part of the craft.
  • I made myself leave at 1, despite the mounting pile of stuff, because I am working really hard on not working extra hours. and because I worked Saturday!
  • My Saturday goal was to return all the phone calls accumulated in my absence, deal with urgent scheduling/staff issues, and get out the new books that were hoarded on my desk. HA!
  • I'm taking vacation next week, which feels weird - I almost never take more than a day here or there, but I'm going to actually take real vacation! Which I will use to clean my apartment, work on Cybils, review books....but I'm not going to check work email!
Programs

What the kids are reading
  • Nobody ever remembers who wrote the Boxcar Children
  • 2nd grader who likes princess stories but isn't quite ready for harder chapters - gave her Princess Posey

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