Go for the Gold
Every-once-in-a-while my team gets stumped on décor for a theme. We throw out ideas and then we throw out those ideas. And nothing goes “ding” like you hope it will. It was like that for this past summer’s CSLP theme: On Your Mark, Get Set…Read!
We talked about book characters, giant foam hands, and lots of other random things. I love a good brainstorming session, but this one felt like a struggle.
Side Note: I don’t know that I ever have mentioned this before, but I made a promise to our Children’s Librarian that none of our displays would ever have the term “a good book” in it. Like our previous Get Caught Up in a Good Book theme. It’s just a pet peeve of hers. And once you notice it, you notice that it is EVERYWHERE in the library world – which isn’t a bad thing at all – it works and gets the job done. It’s just a pet peeve of hers and hey, I usually like being different so that all works out.
Anywho.
It was our Children’s Librarian who finally suggested the idea that sparked excitement for summer decorating: what about gold medals? After all, we had used gold reading medals to promote our Readathon event, as well as in promoting our summer programming.
Natasia took the idea and ran with it. She bought shiny gold poster board (I didn’t know that existed!!!), some bendy mesh red white and blue ribbon, and then cut out words and images using a machine that does such things. I do not mention the brand because they made my machine obsolete, and I felt it should still have been usable.
Behold Natasia Magic:
These were incredibly striking, and you could tell that the kids thought that they were awesome. Everything on them shimmered except for the black – and that made the black really pop.
The favorite part of this for quite a few kids (who seemed entranced by this) was how Natasia handled the medal on/above the door. It’s in three pieces so that the door can open freely. Therefore, when the kids came in, many of them would be looking up to see if the ribbon stretched – but it didn’t and it was like magic to them.
Here’s a close-up:
She continued the theme inside on our long wall. These made me smile several times a day during the summer. Shiny or twirly – or even better shiny AND twirly – things tend to have a positive effect on me.
Ashlynn and Shelby (it was Shelby’s final display before heading off to college ::sniffle::) made the reading bench display. These are books that have recently been returned to our library – which saves us time on reshelving during the summer months. Woohoo! We also reused the inflatable baseballs that were the previous October’s baseball bats. We hung most of them using fishing line, but the ones in the top part of the windows were just thrown up there (which yes, that was fun):
Finally, I got in on more of the fun by making another passive “name game” on our whiteboard. I wanted it to be short ‘n sweet in terms of both creating it and playing it . I also wanted to surprise our boss with it since she’s a huge WWE fan:
Fun Fact: We posted this picture on our Facebook page, and we counted those who replied with their wrestler names as participants in this passive program. Woot!
The summer’s scavenger hunt was created by several team members, and it involved finding several images of sports balls hidden throughout the library. If you look back at the reading bench display, then you can see the basketball “hidden” on our clock.
And this brings me to a slight change on my blog. It might not even be noticeable, but I’m aware of it. As my team has strengthened, and I now have a Marketing Minion (i.e. the magical Natasia), my focus at the library has shifted. Therefore, you won’t find as many passive program printables here.
I’ll write more about that later, but I wanted to say that if there’s something that I write about or picture on my blog and you’d like more information and/or anything I might be able to send your way – then please just ask! Send me an email at hafuboti@gmail.com. I seriously love to get reader emails and am ridonkulously excited to help fellow librarians out!
