British Party

Last summer, I did a super-fun program called Aussie Taste-Test. The kids loved it, I loved it, and the parents loved it. Basically, it was an all-around win! So I thought that this summer, to piggy-back off it, I'd try a similar British Party! Unfortunately, though, I was not met with the same success.

Here is the craft we did:

It's one of the Queen's royal guards! Thanks, Pinterest!

It's made from old fashioned clothes pins (these from Amazon), clothes pin woodies (these from Amazon), red and black paint, 1.5" black pom-poms (these from Amazon), 1/8" white ribbon, and gold fabric paint (this from Amazon). And I did the eyes in Sharpie.

When the kids first arrived, I told them to paint the bottom half of their clothes pins black and the top half red and then let it sit, with the hopes of giving the paint a chance to dry. Then later on, they could add the details more easily.

Welp, the kids painted super-fast and some actually made the entire thing, despite my instructions and despite how gross and wet the paint was. Off to a good start! By the time we were 10-minutes into the program, everyone was already itching for the next activity. And eyeing the food.

But it wasn't snack time yet! First we had to play "Guess The British Slang," downloadable as a PDF here! This was a PowerPoint presentation I made that consisted of  words like "sausages," "elevator," "sweater," "ice pop," and "flashlight," followed by their English equivalents ("bangers," "lift," "jumper," "ice lolly," and "torch.")

Last year's game of "Guess the Aussie Lingo," downloadable as a PDF here was such a success, I assumed this year's would flow similarly. But it didn't.

I will say that, while this seemed less exciting than last year's equivalent, it was still probably the best part of the program. It was definitely enjoyable and absolutely held the kids' attention. Plus, they did the same funny thing they did last year which was to guess each word by using our word, but saying it with an accent. Example: "Sweatah."

Anyway, it was fun, I just felt like it lacked the overall enthusiasm that last year's Aussie Lingo game had. Maybe I should have started with the snacks.

Once I made sure everyone had clean hands it was time. Finally. On to...

THE SNACKS (aka "sampling of the English sweeties"). Here's what we sampled:

* Cadbury Fingers

* Cream Crackers with Mackay's Lemon Curd

* Cream Crackers with Clivers Blackcurrent Jam

* Jelly Babies

* Refreshers

* Digestives (original biscuits)

* Orange MiWadi

* Blackcurrant MiWadi

This was fun and, if the kids weren't so sugar-crazed, it would have been the best part of the program for sure. They went absolutely WILD for the Cadbury Fingers--so much so that I actively cut them off even though we still had an unopened box--and they said the Refreshers were too sour, which struck me as odd because I honestly don't feel like they are sour at all. But it was fun and everyone tasted everything.

After the snacks, the kids finished the details of their crafts (ahem, those who hadn't already done so, finished the details of their crafts): the pom-pom hat, the ribbon belt, and the gold, fabric paint buttons. This took about 60-seconds and mostly came out messy.

And then I was fresh out of activities.

I'm usually a better planner than this! I felt mad at myself as things slowly slid to chaos. THANK GOODNESS for Mary, the clerk who stayed in the room with me, who quickly decided we should play "Pin the Pence on the Flag."

If you haven't guessed, this game is Pin the Tail on the Donkey but with an English coin and a Union Jack napkin. Make shift? Yes. Life saver? DEFINITELY. The kids were giggly and surprisingly less cheaty than they usually are with pinning games. It worked! By the end of the game we only had about 10-minutes left in the program and I was perfectly content with letting them scoot out a bit early.

Phew!

What worked least: The craft. I think it just required too much meticulousness, a trait that kids in grades 1-5 just don't yet possess. And it was this lack of meticulousness that made them rush through the craft and got my timing all wonky.

What else worked least: I feel sort of embarrassed that I did such a bad job with timing in this program (although we're blaming the kids for that, right?). I'm usually a really good planner with these things but I just did NOT prepare enough stuff to occupy an hour of time. And it totally showed.

What worked best: The PowerPoint game of "Guess The British Slang," though even that wasn't as fun as Guess the Aussie Slang last year.

What worked too well: The food. Man. It was ALL about the food.

And on that note...you win some, you lose some right?

International Taste Test + Winter Reading Club (Book A Trip)

I have always said that my favorite part of travel is tasting all the snacks from other countries. The grocery store is a regular stop on all of my trips. In fact, the following picture from my trip to Australia just appeared on my TimeHop feed this morning:

So anyway, when I stumbled across WorldOfSnacks.com (and quickly became obsessed with it), it spiraled into the inspiration for not only one of my biggest programs yet, but our entire Winter Reading Club theme!

I present you... the International Taste Test.

Choosing snacks was no easy task. WorldOfSnacks.com is a wonderful, amazing, super-easy-to-use website where you can order treats from all around the globe, HOWEVER, inventory when you're shopping for a large quantity (i.e. a library program), is limited. It's clearly not an insanely corporate operation over there, but instead a few people who are even more interested in snacks from around the world than I am. It's cool though. After a good amount of cart finagling, I wound up with a decent assortment of goodies from 5 different countries. Selected based on interestingness but also based on availability, I had goodies from Japan, Mexico, Korea, Italy, and Ukraine.

Here are the snack tables all set-up:

All the goodies came to the library in two big boxes. I made some signs and some flags for the tables (shown above) + some other signs to label all the different goodies that we had (although, they didn't exactly explain much, really). Then we cut everything into kid-size samples, and at 2:30pm, the flood gates opened! What a show!

We had approximately 75 patrons come to taste the goodies! Such great turn out! Everything disappeared quickly. First to go was the Purple Sweet Potato Kit Kats, followed quickly by the other flavored Kit Kats and then by the Hello Kitty Biscuits. So basically, the Japan table was a total hit. Leftover at the end were the Takis from Mexico and the Shrimp Crackers from Korea.

My love of foreign travel did not end here. The International Taste Test was only the kickoff to the Winter Reading Club-- themed: Book A Trip.

"Book a trip to the library for this year's winter reading club. As your family reads together, you'll visit six different continents and earn stamps in your passport plus a fun prize at each destination. Earn a stamp each week from January 25th through March 6th and a special prize at the end. And be sure to stop in to kick off all the fun at our International Taste Test on January 17th."

I lucked out because not only were the bones of this reading club already in place from 2006 but I was also able to successfully locate them on our staff hard drive! In short it goes like this: Each week the families "travel" to a different continent, read a book (either one about that continent or anything else that they want), then earn a sticker (one of these, from Upstart) in their reading passport + a souvenir from that place. Here is a link to the "travel itinerary" which outlines the continents in which we "travel" plus the prizes that are earned at each place.

The welcome packets, received upon club registration, look like this:

Pictured above are: The plastic bag that houses everything (these from Upstart), a welcome letter to the parents explaining how this year's Winter Reading Club works, the "travel itinerary" which outlines which continent we travel to which week, a list of recommended books if the families choose to read titles that correspond with each location (they don't have to!), a little compass notepad (these from Oriental Trading), a reading log passport (these from Upstart), a flag pencil (these from Oriental Trading), and two bookmarks with continents on them (any two of these from Upstart).

The weeks follow along like this:

Registration (Jan. 17 – March 6): Sign up packet with reading passport
Week 1 (Jan. 25 – Jan. 31): Australia – Boomerang & Australia Sticker
Week 2 (Feb. 1 – Feb. 7): Asia – Fortune Cookie Eraser & Asia Sticker
Week 3 (Feb. 8 – Feb. 14): Africa – Zoo Animal Sticker Sheet & Africa Sticker
Week 4 (Feb. 15 – Feb. 21): Europe – Medieval Stamper & Europe Sticker
Week 5 (Feb. 22 – Feb.28): South America – Frog Squirt Toy & South America Sticker
Week 6 (Feb. 29 – March 6): North America – Mini Foam Finger & North America Sticker

The prizes are all from Oriental Trading and the passport stickers are these, from Upstart.

At the end of the club, instead of a final party, we'll just give out certificates of completion and one final prize. We wanted to see if a kick-off event (the International Taste Test) would be more well-attended than a wrap-up event and YEP, with approximately 75 taste testers, it sure was! Success!

The Winter Reading Club is now underway. In regard to the International Taste Test...

What worked least: I ran out of Kit Kats too fast! I just didn't have any idea of the magnitude of this program when I was shopping for treats! I could have had a whole Kit Kat Taste Test program (hmmm...) and it probably would have been successful. So next time, more Kit Kats! ("Next time" being the key part of that statement.)

What worked best: This was the best way to ensure a good turn out for our Winter Reading Club, for sure. In 24-hours, we have almost half of the number of patrons registered for the club that we had all of last winter. This was also the most excited I've seen patrons about the Winter Reading Club in a long time. A kick-off event is definitely a better way to go than a wrap-up event...especially a kick-off event that involves treats!

Aussie Taste-Test

Yesterday I finally had my Aussie Taste-Test. Originally scheduled to be an Australia Party for Australia Day (January 26), then rescheduled due to snow for February 17, and then cancelled completely because of my car accident, this program was a long time coming.

In the early planning stages of the original January 26th program, I ordered a massive quantity of Australian goodies from Aussie Food Shop online. (Shipping was a lot of money). Then the program got cancelled twice and, when I came back to work after my time out on disability, I found the box of uneaten goodies under my desk, begging to be used. So we ditched the program's original name (Australia Day Party), renamed it Aussie Taste-Test (maybe due to me being superstitious, maybe not. Does it matter?) and stuck it in the schedule for August! And it really happened!

Here's the spread (pardon the wonky iPhone panorama alignment):

The kids tasted:

* Tim Tams (original flavor)
* Tim Tams (caramel flavor)
* Jaffas
* Vegemite (served on butter crackers)
* Clinkers
* Shapes (Barbecue flavor)
* Shapes (Pizza flavor)
* Shapes (Cheddar flavor)
* Shapes (Cheese & Bacon flavor)
* Chicos

I set all the snacks out on plates with serving utensils, voting sheets, and crayons (as seen above). Then, when the kids came in the room, I had each one take a small plate and a water bottle. Then I split them into two groups. One group came with me starting at the end with Chicos and one group went with our clerk, Mary, starting with the Original flavor Tim Tams. We all made our way around the table, tasting and voting.

The voting sheets had a happy face, neutral face, and sad face, as seen below (left). There was one for each item. As they sampled each snack, I had each kid place a check in the appropriate column. Since I had anticipated a lot of ☺s overall, I also made the favorites voting handout below (right), so a true winner could be scientifically determined:

The consensuses:

Original Tim Tams: 12 like, 0 neutral, 0 dislike
Caramel Tim Tams: 12 like, 0 neutral, 0 dislike
Barbeque Shapes: 7 like, 4 neutral, 1 dislike
Pizza Shapes: 8 like, 1 neutral, 3 dislike
Cheddar Shapes: 8 like, 3 neutral, 1 dislike
Cheese & Bacon Shapes: 7 like, 4 neutral, 1 dislike
Jaffas: 7 like, 4 neutral, 1 dislike
Vegemite: 1 like, 3 neutral, 8 dislike
Clinkers: 8 like, 3 neutral, 1 dislike
Chicos: 7 like, 4 neutral, 1 dislike

And the overall favorite Aussie snack, according to second voting handout:

Tim Tams! Both flavors were tied for first (and some kids circled both). Is anyone surprised? They're delicious. For those wondering, second place went to Clinkers and third place went to Cheese & Bacon Shapes.

After the taste-test, we played a game of "Guess the Aussie Lingo," downloadable as a PDF here! This was a PowerPoint presentation I made that consisted of  words like "mom," "soccer," "elevator," "candy," and "parking lot," followed by their Australian equivalent ("mum," "footy," "lift," "lollies," and "car park"). I had the kids guess what each word would be and we all had a good giggle. They cracked themselves up when they guessed that "parking lot" was said "parking lot" with an Australian accent (and then that "mosquito" was "mosquito" with an Australian accent and "bathing suit" was "bathing suit" with an Australian accent.) There were lots of laughs and everyone really enjoyed this. Plus a girl who's family is from India informed me that sometimes her family calls "bell peppers" "capsicum" too! Cool! It's not just the Australians! Informative and educational.

Again, you can download "Guess the Aussie Lingo" as a PDF here!

After Guess the Aussie Lingo, I showed them the following YouTube videos in the ordered they appear:


(This video got such an uproar of laughter that the kids requested a second showing at the end of the program. I obliged. Future program idea: Make our own "Kids React" video.)





Last, I ended the program with boomerang decorating and letting the kids go back for seconds. The boomerangs were part of my original Australia Day Party itinerary, so I decided to throw them into yesterday's program too since we already had them, even though they weren't taste-testing per say. I mean, why not? They weren't the highlight of the program (you just can't compete with Tim Tams and a Kids React video) but I'm glad I did them anyway. I think it's nice to send the kids home with a craft.

At the end of the hour, as the parents came in to retrieve their kids, many of them also sampled the array of Australian goodies. It was exciting to have adults sample and evaluate things too. A few brave parents even tried the Vegemite--and most liked it!
Overall, this was such a fun program. It's even inspired me to make our entire Winter Reading Club (I know, I know) theme travel so we can end with a massive taste-test of snacks from all different countries! I mean... it's nice to have one measly thing to look forward to in the winter, you know?

What worked best: Guess The Aussie Lingo, the Kids React video, and the Tim Tams. It's a 3-way tie.

What worked least: The boomerangs were fine and I'm still glad that I included them, but they didn't excite the kids the same way the other stuff did. Some of the kids didn't understand what the boomerang was and I wasn't a great explainer. If I were ever to do this again, I would show them a YouTube video about boomerangs first so they'd understand what they were decorating. Even without it though, the kids had fun decorating something--anything, and they all left happy!

Library Luau

Today I had a Library Luau, which was really fun--although not as fun as being at a real luau in Hawaii.

I started the afternoon off by reading the book Pig-Boy: A Trickster Tale from Hawaii by Gerald McDermott. Previously, I had agonized over what to read. I liked the idea of using a story that came from Hawaii, rather than one that that just happened to take place there and I had narrowed it down to three decent options. The other two books up for consideration were The Shark God by Rafe Martin and Punia and the King of Sharks: A Hawaiian Folktale by Lee Wardlaw. Even though Pig-Boy wasn't necessarily my favorite book, it was the shortest of the three and I decided, ultimately, that shorter would work best timing-wise. Turns out that the kids really enjoyed it! One girl even said she had the same book at home and liked it! Success!

When we got to the end of the book, I turned on some Hawaiian music (a playlist made up of songs from Rockin' The Uke and Putumayo Kids Presents Hawaiian Playground) and it was time to play games! I had two games planned and I asked a page to assist me in the program so we could have both going at once (turns out I needed her about 100 more times too, so I'm glad she was there). The first game was Dolphin Ring Toss (this one from Oriental Trading), and the second was an actual Hawaiian game I found online called Ulu Maika. I had the kids split up, half at one game, half at the other, and they went back and forth between the two, playing and giggling, and taking turns really nicely. This group were seriously champions at taking turns, sharing, and being mature. They were an incredibly good bunch.

Anyway I ran the Ulu Maika game (and explained that it was a game used by young Hawaiian warriors to practice hand-eye-coordination) and Michelle (the super-helpful and generally handy to have around page I pulled in with me) ran the Dolphin Ring Toss.

Here's the scoop on Ulu Maika from a Hawaiian man on YouTube:


I was excited about being able to adapt an actual Hawaiian game for library play. To make this, I used old fashioned Tinker Toys (actually, they were the Makit Woodbuilders from Kaplan Toys) for the pegs and then Crayola Air Dry Clay (leftover from last week's What Pet Should I Get program) to make the Ulu Maika stone. I taped off a "court" with masking tape and we were set! This is how it looked:

I kept both games noncompetitive. The kids played against themselves, not each other.

 

As the games wrapped up, I handed outflip flop keychains (these from S&S) because everyone's a winner at the library! Then we moved on to the craft: Paper leis!

These took a bit longer than I'd anticipated and I hadn't expected some of the kids to not be able to string the flowers and straws without help. Did I mention I was grateful for Michelle in the room? As they finished stringing, I helped them each tie off their leis (some made bracelets too--more tying!) and then they posed in front of the photo backdrop (this one from Oriental Trading) that I taped up on the wall. Like at the Noon Year's Eve Party, the backdrop was a hit! I highly recommend these gems to everyone! They come in three pieces and they make programs so fun and festive!

At the end of the program, I served super-authentic pre-cut pineapple from the grocery store out of super-authentic Styrofoam bowls, plus water bottles (with these cute labels for extra festiveness) and two flavors of Hawaiian Punch (Original Fruit Juicy Red and Aloha Morning Orange Citrus) which I guess kids don't love and devour the way I did as a kid because there was a ton leftover. Kids today go for the water bottles. Over Hawaiian Punch! I don't understand.

What worked best: The games were awesome! I think this group could have played games the entire hour if I didn't cut them off to make leis. For many of them, as they finished their craft, they moved back to the games instead of sitting down and having pineapple and juice. Can't go wrong with a ring toss. Ulu Maika was fun too! (Plus, bonus, they liked making fun of my DIY Ulu Maika stone.)

What worked least: The leis were a little hard for some of the kids on the younger end of the age range, but even the smallest ones enjoyed picking out colors and letting me help with the stringing part.

What else worked least, kinda: I OVER-BOUGHT. Pineapple and Hawaiian Punch for all the librarians!

Anyway, this was truly a success! Isn't it great when things just work out exactly like you planned? The best!

Mahalo, everyone!