For Parent Conference Night this year, we had a Library Carnival. Last year at this time, we did an Angry Birds Night. To see how that evening went, click here.
At the Library Carnival this year, we served popcorn and lemonade,
had arts and crafts projects,
iPad games,
a book walk, (which is like a cake walk, only with books as prizes - all donated from Barnes and Noble)
face painting,
and yes, we rented a Bounce House.
Our library has really tall ceilings in three of our four classroom areas, and the bounce house fit perfectly into one of those.
In order to make sure everyone had a fair chance to visit all of the areas, we had a punch card that we gave to each person (student or adult) that came into the library.
The lead volunteer in each area had a hole punch. So as the person visited the area, he/she received a punch for that place. They could visit each station twice. If they filled their punch card & turned it in, we gave the participants a piece of candy. That was our system to keep any one area too crowded. Now some siblings and parents gave their punch card to another members of their family or a friend. We didn't care so much about that. After all, not many parents want to jump in a bounce house! Over all, it worked out very well. We had 200 visitors that evening. We know because that is how many punch cards we gave out.
In addition to the carnival, we also decorated the library for Halloween. OK...I say we, but it was mostly Blanca and Karen. I found the inspiration on Pinterest, and they took it and ran, so to speak.
We had four different book displays in the library, for our Zombie and Undead books, our serial killer books, our scary books, and our Vampires/Mummy books.
We gave out candy to anyone who checked out a book that day.
Of course, on the day in question, we were in costume. We wore our British History outfits because October 31st was also the Senior's first day of research. So it was like killing two birds with one stone. I love it when circumstances align like that.
At the end of the day, we gave away two buckets of candy to the winners of our Monster Mash game. During the week of Halloween we had a contest. We gave our patrons 10 monsters, and they had to find the books from which they came. We had one contest for the students and one for the adults.
Here is Karen with our teacher winner, Ms. Roberts.
All in all it was a productive month. To see our Pinterest board where we found our ideas, go to http://www.pinterest.com/dhslibrary/october-ideas/.
See you next time! Thanks for stopping by.
