I ran Life-Size Candyland for three years, then we took a long break over the pandemic, then revived it in 2023. Later that year, I decided I wanted to change things up, to avoid what had happened with the original program, where people got bored and stopped attending. For that to work, I felt we needed a more flexible format that would allow us to make changes each year so as to make the program feel "new" without recreating it from scratch. I decided to go with a Land of Stories theme, incorporating parts of Candyland into a more general fantasy setting.
We'd also started loaning out our materials regularly to other libraries and my associate came up with the genius idea of creating the gingerbread house out of pvc pipe, so we could easily break it down and recreate it each year. We'd also be able to expand with more houses! We prepared for 2024 and... the weather did not cooperate. We had everything set up on Friday... and had to close Saturday for a blizzard. We did get about 80 people on Monday though.
This year, we had a longer time-period to work on preparing in January, especially since we were able to hold special storytimes in our community room and the weather cooperated. We also had a smaller number of volunteers than in any previous year. We ran the program for much longer periods and we had a slow but constant run of people. It didn't feel like huge crowds, although the turnout was decent, because everyone was spread out. We ended up with just under 100 people on Saturday and a little less, about 90, on Monday. We ran the game 9-2 on Saturday and 9-3 on Monday.
We made several changes in 2025; We kept the game to the first floor only, had a station in the lobby, and started the game path immediately inside the library. It ended with the dragon's lair in the Storyroom, instead of upstairs in the audio room. I also worked on having fewer "prize" items and more hands-on activities. The slower pace and more spaced out, smaller groups mean that there's time and space for them to stop to make things. My associate also made a careful inventory this year, to make it easier to lend out to other libraries - we have some local schools interested as well.
We're looking forward to next year. The library is undergoing some renovations, so we may or may not be able to run it, but we have quite a few exciting ideas for new things to add and change. One is having a small Candyland game in our community center and making the big game in the library more complex, to reach different ages. We'll see what happens!
This link includes the overviews for 2024-2025, future plans, inventory of materials, set-up photos, and a very wobbly video of the path.
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| Finally got enough sticks for us to make magic wands with them! Nobody was injured. Much. |
