Teen Librarian Archives: December 2019

Hello bookworms!

I’m excited to share a new monthly feature on my blog, Teen Librarian Archives!  At the end of each month, I’ll be doing a wrap-up of my month as a teen librarian.  I’ll be sharing my displays, passive programs, crafts, and my teen programming for the month.

Up first, the month of December…

It has been 7 weeks since I started my new job as a youth services librarian at my local library, and I’m loving every minute!  I’m starting to feel a little more settled, and less like a chicken with my head cut off.

To my delight, I’m in charge of decorating our book drop.  I decided to make it Olaf since Frozen 2 had just come out in theaters.  The kids really get a kick out of feeding Olaf their books.

Olaf also fits in with my monthly library scavenger hunt, which was also Frozen 2 themed.   I haven’t decided what my theme for January is going to be yet.  Possibly a Star Wars theme?  Maybe I’ll turn the book drop into a baby Yoda 🙂

Since my library is extremely small, I do not have a ton of display space.  We also do not have a ton of book inventory.  I had originally wanted to do a holiday themed book display, but we only had 3 books in inventory that I would consider “holiday books” for teens.  I decided to set up a small display of teen books with a snow/cold theme.

One of my holiday passive programs was Grinch themed.  I decided to leave empty hearts for patrons to fill up with acts of kindness they could carry out to help grow the Grinch’s heart for the holiday season.  It has been very sweet to see all the different acts of kindness fill the wall.

My other passive program this month was a “take and make” ugly sweater craft.  I made kits by cutting out sweaters out of felt and including the decorations (buttons, pompoms, yarn, sequins, etc.)  This was a big hit.  I set out 32 kits and two days later there was only 4 left.

One of my first programs this month was my Teen Advisory Group (TAG).  Each month my TAG group meets and does some type of service project.  I decided this month we would be making holiday cards to send to children admitted to our local children’s hospital as well as home-bound patrons in our outreach program.  We were able to make 60 cards in an hour.

My next program was a Harry Potter club.  Since it is December, I decided that we were going to make Harry Potter ornaments.   I bought clear ornaments and we filled them with paper curls that corresponded with their house colors.   I also took a damaged copy of a Harry Potter book and we curled some strips of the book pages to include inside the ornament as well.  After we filled the ornament, we used mod podge to glue on our house crests.  We also made a remembrall ornament by filling a clear ornament with red tulle and hot gluing gold ribbon around the outside.

Now for my featured event for December: an Ugly Sweater Party!  This was a big hit.  We decorated ugly sweater cookies to donate to our local first responders while watching the movie Elf.

The teens did a wonderful job of decorating some very ugly cookies.  I also served them hot cocoa & popcorn.

This was a great group of lively girls!

I also participate in two weekly outreach programs at our local schools: a high school writing club & a middle school board game club.  It has been a blast to go into the schools and connect with the teens.

That’s a wrap on December!

What are some of the programs that your local library offers teens?

Feel free to comment with any teen programming ideas 🙂