Tag Archives: fun

Programs, Public

Teen cooking program suggestions!

US Navy 090818-N-6326B-001 Staff and patients participate in a healthy cooking class at Naval Medical Center San Diego
These are suggestions for teen cooking programs from assorted libraries – but they could easily be done for all ages! The library people running these programs report they get a very good turnout; so might be a fun (potentially messy – never wrong) way to bring some new life into your programming.

Note: If your library does cooking programs, know that the CMLE HQ staff is ready and willing (even eager!) to come help with the taste testing! (And if you were not planning to include taste testers – we still volunteer!)

  • Teen Iron Chef
  • Cupcake Wars
  • Cake Boss
  • Fruit Bouquets
  • Stranger Things Cookie Bake-Off ( teens stop by the teen room to pick up a mystery ingredient that they have to incorporate into their cookies; since our theme is Stranger Things/80’s, we’ll be asking teens to use ingredients like Marshmallow Fluff, Teddy Grahams, and other snack foods that were released in the 80’s)
  • Make pasta from scratch – with rolling pins, the way my grandmother made it, not with a machine
  • A culinary school near by and the owner and an assistant (possibly student) came and did a pizza making program
  • Hunger Games Cornucopia themed food program where teens had to rush into the Cornucopia and grab an unmarked bag. They then had a certain amount of time to create a food creation using all of the ingredient.
CMLE, General

CMLE socializes!

CMLE is constantly working to build connections across our system! And our regular social dinner gatherings are a great way to help people meet up and build your networks!

As you can see, we had a great time visiting Old Chicago. Several of us had dessert; we just couldn’t tear ourselves away!

We will have a poll up soon for our next day and location. Be thinking about where you would like to gather in early May! Feel free to add any suggestions in the comments, or email to us.

Programs, School Media Specialist

Oyster River Middle School Bridge Club takes over Library

GoldenGateBridge-001
Check out this article on a fun library program!

“DURHAM — Friday afternoons at a school often resembles the likes of an abandoned building. Eager to start their weekends, staff and students vacate the building at the sound of the dismissal bell, leaving the building silent. However, this is not the case for Oyster River Middle School.

Though the halls are empty and the parking lot barren, one will hear the buzz of discussion and laughter emanating from the ORMS library every Friday afternoon.

For the past five years, the ORMS Bridge Club has taken over the library on Friday afternoons. Run entirely by parents and volunteers, the club has become one of the school’s most popular after school activities. Students in grades five through eight flock the library each Friday afternoon, pushing off the start of the weekend for just a few more hours of fun at school.

The club is run by Lisa Allison and her husband, Nate. Though their son now attends high school, the Allisons return to ORMS every Friday to teach new generations the game of bridge.

“My parents taught me to play bridge when I was seven or eight years old,” said Lisa Allison. “I was not a good player by any means, but I had fun.”

Allison continued to play bridge well into her adult years. When her son was a toddler, she joined a parent group and began to teach and play bridge with other parents while their children socialized and played. Once her son was old enough to attend school, Allison joined the American Contract Bridge League and began to play duplicate bridge for Master Points. As her passion for bridge grew, Allison wanted to share the game with younger generations in hopes of getting the game alive and relevant.

When her son entered 5th grade in 2011, Allison partnered with another parent to start a Bridge Club at ORMS. Though they began with only four members — the minimum required to play bridge — the club has grown exponentially. For the 2016-2017 school year, Bridge Club has nearly 60 students on its roster.”

(read the rest of this article!)

Research

Help Mrs. Porter’s 2nd Grade Class!

While not a library survey, this second grade class found lots of willing participants in their online survey.

“Please help our class as we study surveys and graphs. We would love to see how many responses we can get and all of the different places our responses come from. Each student in our class has created one of the questions in this survey.”

Their survey is now closed, but we’re sure they received lots of good data to work with!

Do you work with a group, second graders or not, who need some lovely library responses?? Send it in, and we will post your survey here!

Communication, General, Public

Libraries can be mysterious places…

Avon Lake Public Library

“Someone has been hiding empty A.1. steak sauce bottles throughout the Avon Lake Public Library and no one knows why.

Dan Cotton, the library’s page supervisor, said 28 of the 10-ounce bottles have turned up since he found the first one Jan. 11 hidden among the library’s newspapers.

No one has been spotted hiding the bottles, but it’s become almost a game among library staff to locate the bottles, which are typically left lying on their sides behind books on the shelf.

“It became something everyone wanted to find,” Cotton said.

The library’s security guard and pages, who shelve the books, have found most of the dark glass containers among the magazines, the fiction section, the children’s section and elsewhere. Although the bottles appear at random, the most popular location seems to be in the nonfiction section, Cotton said.

“We mapped the first 12 to see if we could find a pattern, but we couldn’t find a discernible pattern,” Cotton said.

Jill Ralston, the library’s public relations and marketing coordinator, said there doesn’t appear to be any malicious intent from whoever the culprit is. The labels have been removed and the bottles have been thoroughly cleaned.”

(read the rest of this library mystery article here!)