This week at the library; or, I'm too tired to think of even a marginally witty caption

Monday

• I have no idea how many people signed up on Saturday. Putting the names into my online spreadsheet is turning out to be a HUGE job and I simply haven't had time to finish it. 
• My intern started today. Welcome Abby! [edited to add - 228 signed up Saturday. We had 70 sign up last year]
• We had Check it Out in the afternoon, basically a very simple Make it and Take it. We had four tables covered with new books, bookmarks, lots of glitter, and lamination to laminate the combination of those last two. Good times. About 20 people showed up. This program wasn't as successful as I had hoped - it was mostly small kids and families and I had hoped for elementary and middle school kids. They thought it was a storytime. Whatever.
• I went home and baked cupcakes for Tuesday. (evening storytimes started today as well)

Tuesday

• Our big program today was our Fancy Nancy party! (morning storytimes started today as well)
• We did beading, bookmarks, butterfly masks, fairy wands, decorated cupcakes and made scrap paper bows. We had about 100 people there and lots of positive feedback!

Wednesday

• Baby storytime is back in session
• We had our first Lego Building Club of the summer, run by Abby (intern) and Melissa (aide). They did a great job! 65 people came!

Thursday

• I debuted my new program, Preschool Interactive. It was highly successful, we had 20 people, and lots of positive comments. Happily, I started a great teen volunteer today who was a big help!

Friday

• I spent all morning at the middle school, beginning around 8am, doing storytime for about 100 kids going into kindergarten in the fall. I do a storytime for each glass of about 20 kids. That's five 30 minute storytimes, back to back. Hard on the voice, I'm tellin' ya. How do teachers do it? I wasn't as happy with what I did this year - usually, I do frogs for summer school 1 and fish/water for summer school 2, but I must have sent the wrong things to the secretary b/c I got put down for fish first. And then, with the other stuff going on and our insanely huge summer reading this year and just...stuff, I am running a bit behind and wasn't as well-planned out as I'd like. Would have helped if I'd had more sleep too...anyways, the kids all loved it and the teachers were appreciative of a few minutes to relax!
• I started by asking them if they'd gone swimming or fishing yet this year - lots of enthusiastic yelling responses! We sang Elizabeth Mitchell's Sunny Day twice, with motions, to get everyone ready to listen, then we read All the water in the world by George Ella Lyon, which is amazing. Then we segued into Fabulous Fishes by Susan Stockdale, which I may need to exchange - I've done it so often I've gotten past the point where it's memorized and moved on to accidentally switching out the rhyming phrases because I'm not looking at it! But it's such a great storytime book. We do it twice - once reading the text and echoing, then we go back and identify all the fish (there's usually at least two classes that fall apart over the lionfish, squealing "ewww" etc. I have no idea why. I think it's kinda pretty.) Then we stand up and do The Animals in the Ocean to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus. We had a lot of weird suggestions this year, including sea slugs and alligators. We finish up with Giles Andreae's Pop-up Commotion in the Ocean - which I consider a learning experience in the unfairness of life since there's not enough lift-the-flaps for every kid to do one...and then everyone got a giant paper fish from my die cut to color. Phew!
• I closed today - working from 3-6

Aaaand, that was my week. Sleeping now.