They are now over for the kids but still leave plenty of work for me to do! One of the activities that worked really well for me was the “Girls Goss” session. Previously it l been hard to get the girls aged 8-15 to come in and use the library, let alone use it as a regular meeting place. After some thought, we put on a jewellery making activity, which was a smash hit. 18 girls attended (previously the best attendancewas 5) and the girls decided to make it a regular group – one meeting per fortnight and one big event a month.The girls started out fairly quite and uninterested in interacting outside their usual group, but after a few leading questions to try and get ANYTHING out of them, they opened up and it turned into a loud but fun time. it was to last 2hrs but a lot of them stayed until the library closed. part of the activity the girls renamed the group to G.I.R.L.S (meaning everything a girl is – Gorgeous, Inspirational, Rockin’, Legends and Sassy) and came up with a HUGE list of things they would like to do in the coming year, IE; a library sleepover, field trips (for shopping mostly), cooking and craft, to name a few. so the next time we meet we will be screen printing official shirts they design especially for G.I.R.L.S. i was over the moon that this little baby of mine finally got off the ground with such interest. as if it did not work this time the program would be scratched. although i only have space for 20 girls(as i think that is all one person could possibly handle alone!) we also had similar interest from a few of the boys for a program similar, i thought maybe a gaming night? i would welcome any input on either of these.

other than those, there were other activites that turned out well, we did rock pets, where they painted and decorated a rock for them to take home and also got a little “birth certificate” with their rock pet, that turned up a crowd of 30 children.

we also had paper bag kites – i was not there that day but it went extremely well and people commented on seeing the kids down at the local park later that day flying them.

and one i really enjoyed (despite the clean up) was cornflour goop. we got a small paddling pool and filled it (half-way) with water, cornflour and green food colouring for the kids to play with. while only 8 kids turned up, i have never seen a group spend so much time on one simple activity and enjoy it so much. no more complicated activities from me!

i am proud to say that the community often now look to the library for things for their kids to do in the school holidays and are quite happy to help out. which makes a wonderful change from when i first started here. i cant tell you how happy it makes me to see more school aged children spending their spare time in the library – either reading, on the computer, using it as a social meeting place or….playing chess!

please post a comment if you have any of your ideas that have worked : )