Youth Outreach Practicum Experience and Log

  It was weird planning on a Friday; however, since I will be out of town this weekend and the next week I was planning today instead. I started off by reserving books for the week of July 10th, which is a safari and animal theme. For the books, I tried to mix it up and added a few nonfiction children's picture books about typical safari animals as well as some fiction safari stories and stories about lions. I also found a really cool wordless picture book about a young boy drawing various safari animals and placed that on reserve as well. The goal with this book is to use it with the older groups at Summer Squires and ask them to tell me the story by what they see in the illustrations. The hope is that even if they are rowdy like last week, the need to interpret the story back to me will keep them engaged, while helping them build visual literacy and critical thinking skills. Then, the plan is to have all the groups play an animal-based charades game after/during the binocular cra...

  Storytime started a bit late today, as the patrons slowly trickled in. We started about ten minutes past the scheduled time so ended up finishing a bit late too. However, we reserved the room for additional time for cleanup, so it ended up being okay. I am thankful we waited out because most of the families came within two minutes of each other. In total there were about eight kids and five different families. Furthermore, I also had Ms. Bunny, a library volunteer, there to observe as she is going to run the storytime while I am out of town the next week. So, before the story started, I debriefed Ms. Bunny on the setup and general timeline of events I normally do for the storytime. She asked me a lot about the general ages of the group and how I tried to meet the needs of each. I told her that I would read one book geared towards the younger kids and then one towards the older. Once storytime finally started, I introduced myself to the new families who came. Then I read a fun sil...

  Today was a lot rougher than any of our past visits to LTISD Summer Squires. The kids across the age groups were high energy and very rowdy. It was a test of patience and flexibility for sure. Some of the teachers were helpful as I redirected the kids’ attention back to the story and then reminded them all to listen, raise hands, etc. Other teachers were not as they just sat in the back talking which didn’t help the kids’ ability to focus. As whole, I spent a lot of time on waiting for kids to get quiet and giving many many gentle reminders about good behavior.  We started each group with talk about the library and returning books. Since the kids were so high energy, I let each group vote between two books in hopes it would help keep their attention. After the story I would explain how to create our shark newspaper craft. Each kid would glue several precut pieces-head, mouth, teeth- to the blue paper of their choice and then design the rest of the shark with colored pencils....

  The new adjusted schedule seemed to work significantly better, it gave us time to prepare, and the teachers all seemed to be right on time! It was encouraging as well because we got to see the classes who didn’t make it last week as well. Similar to last week, Ms. Karen B and I alternated who did the story and who facilitated checkout. When watching the story during my turn at checkout, I observed a few differences in how we would each do our story part. Ms. Karen B would usually start with a brief introduction, then a song/chant before reading a story, and the end with a song/chant and directions. Typically, I would start with a brief introduction before reading one book, then I would end with a short game and directions. That said, we both tried to keep the story part to about ten to twelve minutes so the kids would have about ten minutes for checkout. Groups that came last week to the bookmobile ended up brining back most of their books from last week. So, if I was on the chec...

  In the quiet solitude of my room, I crafted the program outline for the week of June 26th. That week I will be out of town, so I started by writing out the stops and the theme. The craft for the week is fairly simple as the kids will be coloring sailboats and fishes that will be used to decorate the bookmobile for the July 4th parade. Thus, the theme for that week will be boats and under the sea. Since several people will be filling in for me with Ms. Karen B, I attempted to give as many ideas as possible but limited the number of books. Ms. Karen B mentioned that some of the volunteers might bring their own books with them that they are comfortable reading, and so I decided to have three on standby on the bookmobile in case the volunteers wanted to read those. I found three books in the catalog that fit the boat theme before suggesting several songs/chants such as “Row, Row, Your Boat”.  After making the outline for that week, I went through the plans for this week’s shark ...

  At Sweetwater today, we were in the clubhouse thankfully as it was very hot and humid outside. Like all the other programs for other stops, we continued our dinosaur theme. We started the storytime a little after ten to give everyone a few minutes to get settled. The parents sat on the chairs and the kids on the rug in front of me. I also sat on the floor to be level with the kids to make it easier for them to see and for them to feel more comfortable. Once everyone was situated, we kicked off story time with the book How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? -  a book that was a hit with the kids. Still, families trickled in throughout the entire storytime. By the end it was the biggest storytime at Sweetwater yet, as there were about 15 kids and maybe eight families in total. After the first story, we did act out the different kinds of dinosaurs- big, small, flying, spiky, etc. One of the little boys started saying how dinosaurs stomped and was having so much fun. So, as a gro...

  Week two at Summer Squires felt a lot more put together. Perhaps, it felt this way because everyone was on time, and it was the second visit. Moreover, we also had two more library volunteers with us this week along with the volunteer who joined us the week prior. The extra hands were definitely needed. This week the kids had a lot more energy than last week. This meant a lot of redirecting their attention back to the front and gentle reminders to be quiet so “our friends can hear.” Luckily, the kids weren’t too bad and once redirected they listened for a while usually until they got excited by something in one of the stories.  After, the story we did a dinosaur craft to compliment the dinosaur story that was read. For the craft, the kids traced their hand on a colored piece of paper for the body of their dinosaur. Then they glued a pre-cut head onto the paper which they would then decorate and color their completed dinosaur. However, some kids used the head cutouts to trace...

  Our first day at LTISD Summer School was interesting. The staff gave both their staff and us the schedule this morning. This led many of the classes not showing up for their visit or being late for their time. We were told by several of the teachers they got the schedule past when the bookmobile was scheduled to start. Luckily, we were able to see one of the groups during the first scheduled break as we didn’t really need it. Ms. Karen B and I made notes to discuss plans to improve the schedule and flow better for the next weeks once we finished up for the day. However, while we waited for classes to hopefully come, we would work on straightening books and work on update our Summer Squires spreadsheet for checkout. When the classes did come, we went with one of two plans: plan on time and the plan running late. If we went with plan on time that meant the class got basically the entire 20 minutes with us. So, for this plan we would have the kids sit on the floor of the bus, give t...

  I am so thankful for technology. I was on the road a lot today, so I used my phone notes, safari, and the library catalog mobile version to plan while others drove. It was my fist time using the library’s mobile catalog and I was happy to discover that it was very user friendly and easy to navigate. I was planning for the week of June 19th and that week’s theme is sharks. Therefore, I sifted through the catalog for fun fictional shark picture books. In the end, I had a pretty good variety of books with sharks acting like humans and or interacting with other mythical creatures like mermaids. I reserved about six shark books.  Once, I got back home I read through my dinosaur books to prep for the week. I started reading them silently, before I decided to read a few out loud to get an idea of some the inflections. Additionally, in my storytelling class I learned about some warmups, and I did a few of those before reading the books aloud. After rehearsing, I reviewed the dinosau...

  The moms did it! The week prior the moms had expressed that they would prefer to have the storytime in the community clubhouse instead of pavilion. However, Ms. Karen B and I had expressed that we had tried but encountered difficulties with the Sweetwater management in doing so. Thus, one of the moms went and directly spoke with management and we were asked to resubmit our request and now we get to be in the cool air-conditioned clubhouse! The moms all seemed pleased when we met in the clubhouse for storytime, as the temperature was cool and there was little chance of their kids running directly to the parking lot. Some of the moms even verbalized their pleasure. This was whole situation was a direct reminder of how important it is for the library to build relationships with their patrons as patrons can be great advocates for libraries' needs- just like the Sweetwater moms. Similar to yesterday, storytime was camp themed. I read three different books to the group. After the first...

  I would say today’s camp theme was controlled chaos.  The most important lesson takeaway from today was adapting to the needs of the patrons present. I will start by saying today did not go entirely as Ms. Karen B and I planned. A lot of the chaos had to with the lack of timing from camp staff. All of our groups arrived at different times to the program, therefore some groups got 40 minutes and one group got 10 minutes. This timing chaos really created issues with the planned tent craft. The tent craft involved cutting out large triangles, pasting popsicle sticks to the triangle cut outs, and decorating the assembled tents. Therefore, to save time we just had the kids draw their own tents and decorate their drawings. This seemed to work a lot better and work better under all the varying time constraints.  Besides the crafts, I read each group one of my three camp themed books, switching the one I did based one the age group. After reading the story, I would with the hel...

  Today was the Lake Travis Community Library summer reading program big launch day! Since today was the big kickoff the main library needed additional assistance so I spent the late morning and early afternoon helping out in the children’s room. My primary task was to do anything that our children’s librarian Ms. Nicole needed at the time and any patrons in the children room who needed assistance. I was assigned for the most part directing the photo  station and organizing all the props. Unfortunately, I made a few little boys sad when I gently informed them they could not kick or throw the beach ball around the library. However, most of the kids were very excited to learn they could wear the unicorn pool float for their picture. The hand held props kept sticking to each other so I eventually taped the over the adhesive to prevent the props from getting stuck together.  Moreover, I also helped inform the kids of our two different scavenger hunts they could do. One of the...

  There are over 700 dinosaur related books at the Lake Travis Community Library. I am positive I only combed through about a quarter of them when searching and reserving books for stories the week of June 12th. The craft for the week of June 12th is a dinosaur handprint cards so kids could hopefully- if they desired to- use these as cards to give to their fathers for Father's Day later that week. Therefore, I decided to theme the storytime and program around dinosaurs. With so many dinosaur books to choose from, I ended up reserved eight different ones with various themes and reading levels for the different age groups I will be running the program for. Additionally, I verified and looked up the signs in American Sign Language for dinosaur, big, and small to teach the older kids. I also wrote down the baby shark song to do with the younger kids as it has lots of movements and is fairly easy to sing to. Once I finished planning for the June 12th programs, I reviewed my plans for th...