This week at the library; or, Chick Drama!

Monday  - morning on the desk, lots of work, afternoon staff meeting. We spent about half of it deciding on signage and rules for the chicks we're hatching. Touching vs. no touching vs. supervised touching and/or scheduled touching with or without local experts. These are the signs I ended up making (and the verdict is no touching. Officially. Unofficially, there will probably be touching...)

Tuesday - morning on the desk. our teen furniture arrived and I got the teens to help me carry it upstairs, unbox it, screw the legs in, and arrange it. Planning programs. Ordering summer materials.

Wednesday - extra big group (somewhere over 50) for Preschool Interactive! the entire preschool from the Catholic school (all 7 of them!) plus lots of out of towners on spring break (I don't know about other counties, but our towns have spring break when they feel like it) and a lot of people who just decided today was a good day for storytime. It was indeed, a very good day. For Messy Art Club in the afternoon we painted eggs. This went really well. I purchased styrofoam eggs from School Discount Supply and skewered them on wooden shishkebab sticks a staff member donated. The kids (and some parents!) painted them with acrylic paint and stuck them to dry in a box and egg cartons. I also had new books out for checking out. I'm not really sure how many people came. I had 72 eggs and we used all of them. Some kids made 1, some made 2, and some made 3 eggs. So at a conservative estimate we had at least 30 kids. Plus parents. I'm going with 45 people. Things I will change next year:

• Remember that I'm using egg cartons and start with them, instead of racing out to grab them 3/4 of the way through the program.
• Pre-punch the holes in the egg carton so I can stick the eggs on the ends of the sticks, rather than the middle, thus lessening the chances of kids getting their eyes poked out.
• Have little sticky labels the kids can write their name on and stick to the skewer.
• Buy more eggs.
• Ideally, I'd have a second person the whole time, giving out paint and emptying and refilling dirty water cups, but that's just a beautiful dream. I did pull in my aide, who really should have been shelving the overflowing carts of picture books, to help some.

Thursday - I went to our local comics shop to pick up this month's magazines, then drove out to Janesville to get our incubator, stopped at Michaels for fabric paint and twigs and floral foam (more on that later), then to Walmart for the rest of the t-shirts for next week's programs. This sentence does not convey the frustration and endless annoyances of the day. ARGH.

Friday - Yawn. So sleepy. The library is, as it was yesterday, very, very hot. Sooooo sleepy.