Spring Break at the Library: Stealth Programming For Days

So first off all, can we give a big round of applause to Chris from Criplold for her stellar  redesign of my blog? She's a graphic design artist, and had an awesome deal while she was distracting herself from other things. Chris is lovely to work with and hella creative. And I don't use the word "hella" lightly. Do you think I came up with any of this? Absolutely not. This is 100% Chris, and I'm kinda in love with it. Hit her up at her blog or on Twitter  to tell her how cool she makes me look, and to ask how you can be cool too.

OKAY, SO: Spring Break. The one week in the school year that tells you what a wuss you've become since last Summer Reading; the glimpse of what's to come that makes you rethink your day for maximum caffeine consumption. This Spring Break for our public schools also was National Library Week, and our library had a program where people could take selfies of themselves, tag them online with a hashtag, and be entered in a drawing for gift cards. I loved this idea, and was sure patrons would be into it; but in YS we looked for ways it could translate for kids.

Of course, there was only one answer:

....

HILARIOUS DISGUISES.

Kid puts on disguise, poses somewhere in the room, we snap a picture, and it gets hung up on the Boat. The whole department had a great sense of humor and got in on the act so we had a few "selfies" hanging up  when it started(I get it, they're not really selfies, but as the librarian you can call a thing whatever you want to). The kids really had a blast (almost 40 total, which is way more than we thought there would be).

Spring Break kind of snuck up on me this year, but swarms of kids looking for something to do need some guidance. What's a YS Department to do?!

Luckily, it's also Wimpy Kid Month so I created a makeshift Story Action Pod with the Wimpy Kid cover template. Piggy-backing off of this (and not about to create something from scratch) I printed off my DOAWK Scavenger Hunt  and had kids hunt for the characters. If they found them all they got 1 Mom Buck (leftover from last program) and if they also found a book to check out they got 2. I had 3 kids ask about it as I putting it together, so I'm glad I got something up. Seven takers in the 1st half-hour. 

Grampa was the hardest to find.

Last but not least, I wanted to give the school-age Mega Picks some love, since everything Frozen had long since thawed (and I was sick of looking at snow, even the cartoon kind). Sooo here's my updated book display:

...and that's how we do Last Minute Spring Break.