Youth Outreach Practicum Experience and Log

  Sweetwater was full of kids, parents, and grandparents again this week! It was exciting we had thirteen youth and about seven or eight adults all present for our monster themed storytime. I started off by speaking to the adults about some reminders such as next week being the last storytime, the library summer programs in August, etc. Then I kicked off storytime by asking the kids about monsters to get them ready for our monster story. I started with the longer book, in which the kids sat and listened really well. During that first story, we had some more families come in. It was cute as one the families had a little toddler who ran right up to me and the book and sat down very excitedly. Once the story was finished, I had all the kids stand up for our monster movement activity. The children all gave me their best monster impressions- some of the favorites being the friendly monster, sweet monster, and tall monster. I followed up with the book Monster Trouble! I had such a swee...

  Today I was traveling back from my out of state trip, and my flight was delayed a bit. As a result, I broke up my preparations and reading rehearsals into two parts- what I could do in flight/at the airport and then everything else at home. I had done a lot of my prep for the week before I left, however I still needed to finish preparing for my interview with my supervisor. Thus, I took time to reflect on my experiences so far and think about what more I wanted to lean about outreach. I also thought about the community we were serving and the different populations groups. From there, I opened my notes app and wrote out six different questions based on these thoughts to dive deeper into the world of outreach with Ms. Karen B. Then I drafted an email to send my supervisor with a reminder about our interview date and the list of questions I would be asking. I did this as Ms. Karen had a lot going the upcoming week and I didn’t want her to feel overwhelmed or caught off guard.  ...

  It was a bittersweet day as it was my last time with all the kids at the Summer Squires program. The morning groups were fairly well behaved with the a few exceptions. The afternoon groups were a little higher energy. However, to help keep the focus with the kids and minimize distractions, last week I asked the children’s librarian along with Ms. Karen B for some more tips to keep the kids in check. I ended up using several of their suggestions. I found that just telling the kids if they kept talking, I would then move them seemed to help keep them in check a bit better. As well as being firmer when I gave directions for games like emphasizing what specific behaviors they needed to display to be called on. Also, my handy dandy the let’s be “quiet so our friends can hear” or “we are going to continue with the story now” reminders helped most of the kids. The combination of all three really minimized the distraction level and rowdiness of the group as a whole.  I really enjoye...

  Today was the last day I was planning for a week with two programs and the last time I was reserving books for the program of the week following. I started out the last big planning session by utilizing the library catalog to reserve books. My computer was taking forever to update, so I accessed the library catalog through my phone. From there, I conducted two different searches for the same fantasy genre. For the last week of internship, I will only be at Sweetwater, so I wanted to do a magic and fantasy theme. However, searching fantasy in the catalog yielded few children’s picture books. Therefore, I searched magic and found a lot more options to peruse. The books I chose all explored magic and fantasy in different ways from magical hats to mythical creatures like mermaids. The two books I read will ultimately be determined based on the children in the crowd at that program. I then retreated to my living room and pulled the monster books I had previously chosen off my shelf. I...

  We had fourteen kids today of varying ages at the storytime- the most we have had in attendance yet! There were quite a few new faces, so I reintroduced myself and the bookmobile to the community before starting with the first story. I began with a story about a lending animal zoo geared toward older kids. Then everyone got up with me to go on a safari game I made up called “What do you see?” In the game, I would have all the kids march in place until I said stop. Next, I would point to one child ask them “what do you see?” They would tell me an animal, and everyone would act out that animal before we would repeat the process all over again. The kids all really got into their animal impersonations and the parents seemed to enjoy watching their kids play as well. After, the game we read another book, before we went into our craft time. I decided to switch up the craft for the Sweetwater program. We made long binoculars out of paper towels rolls that were donated. The steps to deco...

  Animals are a hit with kids. When I told each group today, we would be talking about animals in our story and game they all got really excited. I noticed this helped the kids focus more on each of the stories I read. For the younger groups I read a counting animal safari book that I had them actively participate in. So, on each page they held up the number of fingers for the number of animals present then as a group we would say the type of animal present. The kids seemed to love this and would usually progress to enthusiastically shouting out the animal. The level of engagement with the animal themed stories was impressive especially for the younger kids. Additionally, I loved seeing that excitement on their faces because they were invested in the theme/topic. So, I made a mental note to start creating list of topics that interest kids to reference throughout my career.  After the story we moved onto our telescope craft. I introduced the craft by asking the children what ki...