Farm in the Library

We are extremely lucky to have a magnet school in our community that focuses on urban farming. They've been great partners for programming, whether it was lending us cornstalks for a popcorn program or bringing in different experiences for our kiddos. Here are a few of my favorite farm encounters I've been a part of:

Grow, Eat, Grow!
For the summer reading theme year that focused on health and fitness we had an outreach person from the farm come with fresh veggies, picked that morning, and seeds. We tried zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, and carrots. I made some quick cheesy zucchini in the office toaster oven, just slice it in half length-wise, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cheese (I use parmesan for myself, mozzarella for the kids). We sat in a big circle and the kids got to hold different seeds, smell them, talk about them, and then examine the veggies. Many tried things their parents said they avoid at home. Most of the kids loved the cheesy zucchini. It was a really simple but effective program for kids of all ages.

Llama in the Library
This one wasn't with the high school, it was a local farmer that does school visits with her llamas. In the scheme of outside programs it was pretty economical and it's pretty eye-catching to have a llama in the second floor children's room. I didn't plan this one, my coworker organized it but I ended up being the one overseeing it on the day of.
A few details particularly exciting to me:
-the llama arrived in a minivan with the seats taken out, much easier to maneuver than a truck or trailer
-it wasn't used to be high up, so it spent most of the time staring out our windows at the unusual perspective of the outside
-it made this quiet humming-groaning noise the whole time
-llamas only spit at other llamas, never at humans

It was really friendly and in addition to a story, details on llama goods, passing around yarn and other items, the farmer let everyone pet the llama and take their pictures with it.

Year of the Rooster
We have these laminated cards we show the kids at class visits talking about the different kinds of programs we have. One has a picture of a chicken visiting the library. All the kids think it's awesome and from the beginning of my tenure I longed to have a chicken visit the library again. It took over a year to find just the right timing for the farm high school and the library. When I saw that this was the year of the rooster in the Chinese zodiac, I knew I had to have a rooster come to the library to celebrate the Lunar New Year. We have a high number of Chinese families that attend our programs. We had to shuffle things around last minute but managed to schedule the rooster for the last weekend of the New Year celebrations. My first question when booking the rooster was are roosters even ok to meet? Are they aggressive? I was told they can be but the one at the farm was great with kids. And was he ever! Hatched at a daycare in a nearby town that doesn't allow roosters, only hens, Gertie was used to being in a classroom setting. The outreach person from the farm talked a little about roosters and then answered a deluge of questions. Everyone got a chance to pet him and hold him if they wanted. He was very patient and beautiful.

We even had a local online news outlet there covering it. I gave out a handout with all of the Chinese Zodiac animals on it and everyone figured out there personal one. We decorated cartoon zodiac paper lanterns printed out on red paper, using pipe cleaners and gold pens, I did the cutting beforehand because it's unlucky to cut things during Lunar New Year. I had an artistic library assistant put some greetings in Chinese pictographs on the wipeboard for people to copy. It was a fun combination of animal and cultural programs.

Muggle Quidditch

I have a year's backlog of programs to enter, so I'm going to do them in no particular order. I thought I'd start with my Quidditch program because it went really well and it's the kind of thing that works well in October and with a new Harry Potter world movie opening up in November.

I'm not very sporty, I don't play any sports, I don't watch any sports, so I had some trouble really feeling this past year's summer reading theme. But I love Harry Potter and the combination of books and sports seemed like a perfect fit for the library. I held it the Tuesday after Harry's birthday (July 31) and the release of the Harry Potter play. I had really hoped to bring a collegiate Quidditch player in to lead some drills and talk about playing Quidditch in the real world, but none of the teams I reached out had players hanging around for the summer. So it was just me. I also knew I wanted to make brooms.

Making Brooms

There are tons of things on Pinterest and the Internets and Instructables on great ways to make brooms. Wizarding cosplay aside, the main function of the broom in Muggle Quidditch is to be a kind of fun hindrance when running and managing the ball. One of the most popular methods of making brooms is using pool noodles. It wasn't really in my budget to buy noodles so I went looking for other materials. I considered duct taping paper towel tubes together but then decided to try our local recycle store to see if they had any large cardboard tubes and did they ever! EcoWorks is just a few blocks from the library and they collect leftover items from industrial and commercial businesses as well as individuals and then sells them at an extra low cost, specifically intended for educators. They have everything from tile samples to bolts of cloth to random knitting needles. I think these are becoming a popular thing, so definitely check to see if there's a similar organization in your area. I think these tubes were probably from a company that uses large rolls of paper or some other kind of material, you could also try going to businesses directly. The tubes I got were a bit over 5 feet long and I figured I could cut them in half (somehow) and get two brooms out of each one. I got 12 and they were 25 cents a piece, a pretty awesome deal. I ended up using a very old hacksaw to cut them in half (paper dulls blades fast, so you won't want to use a new blade on something like this) without too much trouble.

Next was the bristle part of the broom. I originally cut out pieces of yellow paper to be rolled around the end of the tube but then I found a roll of yellow vinyl, like you would use as a tablecloth, and it was perfect. We have a big selection of fun patterned duct tape so the kids could really personalize their brooms when taping on the bristles.  

I made a paper with broom names from the Harry Potter books/movies/videogames using information from Muggles’ Guide to Harry Potter from wikibooks.org so that kids could give their brooms authentic names if they wanted. 

I used some large printable mailing labels we had lying around to make big stickers (cut out by volunteers) for decorating the brooms. There were clouds, comets, firebolts, and shooting stars, some in color, some the kids could color in if they wanted. We had markers they could use to write the name of the broom on the handle. For mine I actually went over the name in glitter but decided that we wouldn't be able to do that in the program because they wouldn't be able to dry in time for us to play Quidditch with them. I went with the Comet 260, being a Tonks fan. This picture is before I switched to the plastic vinyl bristles. 

As the kids finished their brooms I had them practice moving around the room with them between their legs until everyone was finished. I was relieved that this part went pretty quickly. We had a range of kids from 5 to 12 and I had two teen volunteers and some parents that helped with assembly. I made sure to run around with my broom a little first to kind of break the "looking like a crazy person" ice. They got the hang of it quick.

The Rest of the Equipment

The US Quidditch equipment requirements stipulate using 1 semi-deflated volleyball as a quaffle and 3 semi-deflated kickballs as bludgers. For goals they suggest taping hula hoops to chairs or whatever you've got that will hold them up high, an official game has 6 hoops. I had high hopes of borrowing balls from parks and rec in our city but never was able to get anyone to answer me. Instead I purchased two volleyballs and 2 rubber balls from 5 and Below, this was the most expensive part of my program but now we have them for future uses. We already had two 4-square balls which I also used.  I used a paperclip to deflate the balls until the were pretty easy to grip one handed, since I didn't know where our pump was. I duck taped three hula hoops to the tops of chairs, another branch had them laying around. Our program room wasn't really big enough for a full Quidditch field. 

Playing Quidditch

We ran three drills:

• The first was a simple maneuvering exercise. I put 6 chairs in two long rows and we slalomed around them several times. 
• Next we practiced passing. We got in two separate lines and two kids at a time side-stepped down the room with their brooms throwing a quaffle back and forth.
• The last drill we did was shooting. One of our teen helpers acted as keeper and we lined up half way across the room and everyone got a three chances to get the quaffle through a hoop. I had to get the teen to ease up on the kids a bit, but otherwise it went smoothly. 

There are lot of drills available on YouTube and through US Quidditch, most of them are adapted from soccer and rugby.

I hadn't planned on playing a full game but the kids really wanted to scrimmage. I printed out this wonderful handout from US Quidditch with the rules and game play on it for kids to take home and through some trial and error, we played a heavily modified game. The US Quidditch website has a lot of tips on playing Quidditch with different age groups. 

We broke into two teams, I think we had seven on each side. I put a teen on each team to help, they continued to play the keepers because I was most concerned about the safety of that position. We gave out two bludgers to each team and a quaffle to each team. We placed one hoop at each end of the room. I stood on the sideline of the center of the room. The rules were that the bludgers could tag anyone who crossed the center of the room and came  on the side with your goal. If you were tagged with the bludger you had to return to your end of the room, kind of like home base. There was no throwing of bludgers, just using them to tag kids, I was very firm on this and had to remind the kids a lot. The beaters (kids with the bludgers) were the only ones who used them. All of the other kids had to try to get the quaffles down the field and into the goals. They had a really hard time grasping strategy but the teens were able to kind of take control and had a few huddles to help them out. I won't lie, there were some direct hits to faces, balls were flying everywhere, some kids tripped flat out on the floor, but there were no tears, no blood, no bruises. The deflated balls and relative strength of 5 to 9 year olds kept it fairly safe and bloodless. I consider this to be the major success of the program- no injuries!

The kids had a blast, there were strips of yellow plastic all over the floor, kids were reminded that their brooms were not for hitting and anyone seen hitting someone with a broom in the library would be asked to leave, no warnings, and things seemed to work out fine.