"When [blank] worked here..."

And just like that, in the blink of an eye since my last post, I've been in my new position for two and a half months.  For the most part, I'm loving it.  I'm starting to get to know people, find my groove, all that good stuff...but there are a few things that I'm struggling with.

First, teen advisory groups...and really, just teens in general.  I love our teens.  They're great, and our TAG members have good ideas, but damn, it would be nice if TAG members would actually show up to the programs we plan!  I've been trying to be open to their ideas and work with them to make programs what they want, but then the day of the program arrives, and not one TAG member is there.  I guess I could just be happy that there are people coming and let it go that none of them are TAG members...bu what gives?  I feel like I'm doing something wrong.  Also, the teens who hang out in the library are, for the most part, super well-behaved, and all of them that I've interacted with are fantastic.  I, however, am ludicrously awkward and can't help but feel like the doofy single parent in a sitcom every time I interact with them.  I keep trying to remind myself that establishing relationships with them will take time, but sweet lord, if a magical pill exists that would make me less socially awkward, someone let me know so I can get my hands on it.

Next up, the stagnancy.  Good god, the stagnancy.  This could just be a problem with my particular library, but it seems like everything moves at a snail's pace and people are so complacent that nothing ever gets done.  Our current layout isn't working, and ideally we'd be able to make x, y, and z changes but they aren't a possibility.  Can we make some smaller changes instead?  Of course not!  Let's just leave it the unfunctional way it is instead because if we can't have the perfect scenario, we may as well just not fix anything.  Need approval for something?  You'll get it, but be sure to submit it at least six months in advance, because it's going to take forever for you to get a response, if you ever do.  Everyone is unhappy with the way something is handled, but can we do it a different way?  Sure, that would be a good idea, we can discuss that in our next staff meeting...you know, if we ever had staff meetings.  I feel like everyone is looking to me to be the mover and the shaker, but yo, I'm one person and a brand new librarian at that...how much change am I supposed to single-handedly introduce?

Aaaaand finally, the cherry on top of my struggle bus, the sentence that is rapidly becoming my least favorite combination of words in the whole world: "when [former teen services librarian] worked here..."  This may come as a startling newsflash to some of the staff members and customers at my branch, but I am not the former teen librarian.  I get that he was super outgoing and played guitar with the teens and liked to go to the high school at lunch to hang out and meet new kids...that's super cool.  But I'm crazy nerdy and don't know how to play the guitar and have raging social anxiety, so if you're waiting for me to go start an impromptu jam session with some high schoolers during their lunch break, you're going to be waiting for a verrrrrrry long time.  If, on the other hand, you'd like to learn how to knit, are looking for a suggestion for your next supernatural read, or want to talk roller derby strategy with me, I am down for that!  I'm more than willing to push myself out of my comfort zone, and I've been working on doing that, but every time the words "when [FTSL] was here" come out of someone's mouth, I die a little inside.

Anyway, the above griping aside, things really are going well.  I had one instance of chicanery in the teen area during a passive program, but I put out some signs reminding everyone that if they want to have nice things they need to be respectful, and we haven't had any problems since.  I've been working on slowly worming my way into the confidence of our teens in my own geeky, awkward way, and I'm doing all the research I can on young adult programming so I can bring interesting, helpful programs to them.  Every job comes with its highs and lows but I think, all things considered, things are going to be alright.

Has it already been a month?

Yesterday marked month one at my new job.  In some ways, I feel like I haven't really started the job yet, since most of the programs I've been doing were planned by the children's librarian before I got hired, but I did dive in right smack in the middle of Summer Reading, so all things considered, I guess I can still be proud of the work I've done so far.

Whether or not I can actually consider myself a "real" librarian yet, I have to say my proudest moment thus far, 30ish days into the job, is having a parent tell me on Monday how much her daughter loves me.  I was super professional when she told me, too. I believe my exact words were, "oh my god, YAY!" complete with hands clasped in front of me and one foot lifted off the floor.

Seriously, though, it's unbelievable how good it felt to hear that her daughter is excited to have me at the library.  She and one of the other teen girls I've been working with have become friends, and they (plus four other girls!) have decide to join Teen Council, which basically triples our active membership...it's exciting!

One month in the books...I'm happy with what I've accomplished so far.

Well, that was unexpected

I'm a planner.  Anyone who knows me well will tell you that.  I make checklists for everything, when I'm coaching my team I plan the entire practice down to the minute, and I even keep a database with every practice I've ever run...I like to be prepared.  I like to know what's going to happen.

Sometimes that doesn't work out so well.

For instance, when I was in school getting my MLS, I was adamant that I was going to be a cataloging librarian at a public library.  Then I moved to a new state, where none of the public libraries in the area do their cataloging in-house.  So...whoops.  That didn't work.

I adapted, though.  I discovered I had a passion for early literacy and decided to change course and work toward being a children's librarian.  Storytimes!  Playing with tiny humans all day!  Who could ever complain about that?  I had a new plan.  I was ready to go.

And now, somewhat unexpectedly, another wrench (albeit a welcome wrench) has been thrown into my altered plan.  You see, I got a librarian job.

A teen librarian job.

I just wrapped up my first week, and the suspicion that our HR department is punking me and they're going to step in and tell me they were joking and I'm not  the new teen librarian is gradually fading.  I'm excited--like, ridiculously excited--to dive in and start working with our teen council to plan our post-summer reading programs.  Everyone is friendly and nice and seems happy to have me on board.  But at the same time, dude...working with teens is so much more intimidating than working with babies!  They're actual people.  I can't just make faces at them and trick them into liking me by teaching them goofy rhymes and singing the elevator song with them.

Shit just got so real.

At least my love of young adult lit is finally paying off!  My husband can no longer mock me for constantly reading teen books.

Bubble Baths!

Through a weird amalgamation of crazy events, my Baby Steps partner in crime and I both ended up being out and unable to plan a program for our last storytime before our pre-SRP break.  Fortunately, another coworker lent us a few of her planned songs, and we were able to put together a bubble bath-themed storytime that ended up being really good!

We started off with our regular hello songs, bounced around in our little red wagons, and then my partner read our book--Ten Pigs: An Epic Bath Adventure.

I picked this book because when I read it before storytime it made me laugh out loud.  Everyone loved it!  The illustrations are fantastic, and we all had fun counting up to ten and then back down as the story progressed.  I highly recommend this book if you're looking for an entertaining bath time story to share.

After our story, we practiced our counting with a five floating bubbles flannel set.  The rhyme is very simple--"Five little bubbles floating to the top, one little bubble did not stop!  Uh oh...pop!" 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Five blue bubbles floating around!

This was one of the rhymes that my lifesaver of a coworker shared with us.  I'm not sure where she got it from, but our babies loved it!  They kept trying to come up to the board and help us pop the bubbles as we counted down.

We have some other songs and stand up activities that we do regularly, like practicing stop, playing with egg shakers, and the number one favorite around our library, the elevator song.  Before we ended, we had one more bathtub song courtesy of my coworker, and it might be my favorite song ever.  We all had so much fun singing it together, and if you have the time I highly recommend making some kind of flannel set to go with it, because our babies loved all the tub toys in our set.

Every bathtub should come with an octopus!

Without further ado, I give you "Sing a Song of Tub Toys!"

Sing a Song of Tub Toys 

(to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It")

There's a sailboat in the tub, in the tub

There's a sailboat in the tub, in the tub

There's a sailboat in the tub,

Rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub

There's a sailboat in the tub, in the tub

You can repeat this with whatever tub items you'd like to use!  We had a frog, a duckie, a whale, and an octopus...as it turns out, it's kind of hard to fit "octopus" into that song, but we all enjoyed the adventure of trying to figure out how to sing it.

This was by far our most rushed attempt at getting a plan together since this coworker and I started doing Baby Steps together, and I was really worried that would be reflected in the storytime, but it was such a blast...my coworker and I both agree that it was one of our favorites ever!

Animal Sounds

Is there anything better than listening to babies mimic animal noises?  One of my favorite things to do with my niece is to flip through pictures of animals and practice making all of their noises with her.  Best thing ever.

If it's that fun to make animal noises with one baby, my Baby Steps co-conspirator and I figured it would be even more fun to do it with a room full of babies!  Thus, the "Animal Sounds" Baby Steps plan was born.

The Plan:

1. Hello songs: 
1. Well hello, everybody
2. Hello, hello
2. Knee Bounces:
1. Bouncing up and down in my little red wagon
2. Row, row, row your boat
3. Rhymes and Songs:
1. Roly Poly
2. Elevator Song
3. Dog on the Bus (yay, Raffi!)
4. Stand up activities:
1. Practicing Stop
2. Handy Spandy
5. Egg shakers:
1. We're going to Kentucky
2. Egg shakers up

In the midst of all our singing and rhyming, we read Mommies say shhh! by Patricia Polacco.  For this storytime, we had animal puppets that we used along with the book, holding each of them up and having everyone make the sound along with us.  If you don't have access to animal puppets, you can also make little flannel board animals!

See?  So cute!

After reading the book, we used a bluetooth speaker connected to my coworker's phone and found an educational app that had a bunch of different animal sounds...we would play each sound, and then the kiddos who were old enough to recognize them would guess what the animal was.  Then we would find the animal puppet that went with the sound and all practice making the sound together.  So much fun!  This was one of my favorite storyimes to date.

Disclaimer: This last activity is obviously more successful if you have some slightly older kids in the room, since tiny babies aren't going to be able to guess, but that doesn't mean you can't do it with only small babies!  It's still adorable watching them hear the sound and respond when you hold up puppets.    

Helicopters are aircraft too!

I read a picture book called Airplanes last week, and included in its examples of all the many different airplanes out there was a helicopter.  Now, maybe I'm just taking this personally because my husband flies those, but guys...helicopters are not airplanes!

This book suddenly made it very important to me that kids know the difference between fixed wing aircraft and rotorcraft.  So I decided to plan a helicopter-themed storytime.

...as it turns out, it seems that storytime rhymes have overlooked helicopters just as much as books about aircraft.  I couldn't find any cute flannel rhymes about them, so I had to take matters into my own hands and (yes, I'm ashamed to admit) modify an airplane rhyme so it fit helicopters instead.  I give you...Five Little Helicopters, adapted from the Five Little Airplanes rhyme found here.

Five little helicopters flying in the sky

Come in for a landing from way up high!

The first little helicopter, shining in the sun 

is the first to land on helipad one.

The second little helicopter, carrying its crew

lands very slowly on helipad two.

The third little helicopter, such a sight to see

lands very quietly on helipad three.

The fourth little helicopter can't wait anymore

and lands very quickly on helipad four.

The fifth little helicopter, last to arrive,

finally lands on helipad five.

To supplement our helicopter flannel board rhyme, my coworker wrote a helicopter chant for us to do, too!  The babies loved it.

Helicopter, Helicopter

to the tune of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

Written by Jenny Young, my library partner in crime!

Helicopter, helicopter, round and round (roll your hands)

Helicopter, helicopter, up and down (lift baby up/down)

Helicopter, helicopter, way up high (lift arms up)

Helicopter, helicopter, touch the sky (stretch and reach for the sky)

Helicopter, helicopter, back on the ground (touch the ground)

Helicopter, helicopter, safe and sound! (thumbs up)

We also read Yellow Copter, a story about a yellow rescue helicopter that saves a teacher from a broken down ferris wheel. As an added bonus, my aforementioned pilot husband, who coincidentally happens to fly a yellow rescue helicopter, visited storytime to read the book for us.  The kids loved having him there!

Not pictured: One of our babies who kept trying to come to the front and help read the book with him!  So adorable.

Now maybe I need to get to work on a picture book about all the different kinds of helicopters out there...

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate storytime for me...

There's an open librarian position I'm waiting to find out if I got an interview for.  I figured hey, why not be proactive while I wait and prepare a storytime, so I'll be ready in the event that I get a happy call?  Rain...that would be a fun topic to cover.  Let's do it!

So I started doing it.  I have the books.  I'm looking at some flannel board activities.

And then I'm working in check-in and someone returns a copy of "A Pirate's Night Before Christmas."  And now I'm sitting on my couch putting together a "Pirate Christmas" themed storytime.  Because that makes sense.

Pirates are so fun, though!  And because a. I have a complete inability to focus on just one thing at a time and b. who knew there were so many cute pirate books out there, I actually decided to do two piratey storytimes, one the strangely specific pirate Christmas, and the other just plain old pirates.  Does that mean I'm actually putting together three storytimes all at once, when I don't even actually do any storytimes at work?  Yes.  Yes, it does.  But in my defense, the only difference between the two pirate themes is the books I'll be including...the songs and flannel board stuff will all be the same.  So...it's 2.5 storytimes.  That's completely acceptable.

Maybe I should just combine them all and do a Rainy Pirate Christmas storytime.  In the meantime...

It's (finally) beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I started making the above flannel pieces in December, to use when introducing any Christmas-themed storytimes I may end up doing.  Finally finished them...just in time for Christmas in February?

Flannelboards for Bookworks

We have a preschool coming into the library next week for a tour followed by a storytime, and I get to fill in since the staff member who usually conducts tours will be on vacation!  Said staff member kindly shared her plans with me, and one of the rhymes she was planning on using was this one:

Bookworm, Bookworm

Bookworm, bookworm, where do you hide?

Is it the [color] book that you're inside?

It's simple and cute...the kids call out colors one by one until you finally get to the last book, the one our bookworm is hiding in.  All the preschoolers get into it, trying to guess which book has the worm, and it's an adorable thing to behold.

It got even more adorable when I made my own flannel set to use!

Looking at them now, I'm kind of regretting covering so much of the colored cover with the white for the book's pages...but it's a small group of kids, so they'll be close enough to see the colors, and if it's a problem I can always trim down the pages before I use them again.

As a bonus, my coworker also recommended this bookish version of "If You're Happy and You Know It," which I modified a bit. It seems like I end up using a re-imagining of that song in every storytime I do...that makes me happy (and I know it!).

If You're a Reader and You Know It

If you're a reader and you know it, clap your hands

If you're a reader and you know it, clap your hands

If you're a reader and you know it, then your books will surely show it

If you're a reader and you know it, clap your hands!

*say, "shh, I'm reading!"

*shout, "hooray!"

*do all three

Last time I got to do a storytime with this group, they were really into all our singing, so I'm hoping the kids will love this song as much as I do.

Happy reading, readers!