Teen Art Take Over

The teens I work with are super creative, to the point where they put me and my cats (who actually do paint with their paws using watercolors) in absolute awe of their creative efforts. The most recent Art Club idea that one of the teens had was to make sculptures using cardboard. I thought this sounded cool and I wanted to see more. If you want to see more too, read on!

Teen Time!

One of the regular teens wrote an awesome blog post about volunteering in the library more! I want to share this post and showcase not only the awesome writing, but all of the volunteer opportunities that are available at the library. It is really exciting to be able to offer this experience for teens, and I encourage other libraries to consider having teen volunteers. Read on to check out the article!

What Social Media do Teens Use?

What Social Media teens use:

Hey everyone! I am figuring out what sort of social media teens use and this is what I got from TAB. (Teen Advisory Board) Read on to see what they said! (It is really funny!) 

Capt. Dargo!

We got to meet an awesome police dog this week! Captain Dargo is with the York City Police Force and is a specially trained canine who can do everything from locating bombs to finding a missing child. Not only is his nose super sharp, so is his mind! Captain Dargo was definitely a joy to meet and hear about, and his partner Lieutenant Godfrey did a great job describing not only what Captain Dargo does, but also his personality. (Apparently Captain Dargo likes getting chicken, bacon, and other various treats at the local market, and is very spoiled there!)  Captain Dargo does visits throughout the county to get people familiar with him and his unique abilities. Here is his facebook page, check it out! https://www.facebook.com/K9Dargo I really enjoyed having Captain Dargo here, and I hope to have him visit again! This is a cool program that encourages cross-promoting with an important public presence and figure, and is something I would encourage other librarians to consider doing in their libraries! Service animals have so much to teach us and are appealing to a wide audience.
Dawn states: Service cats: not a thing because everyone knows cats do what they want.

Email me for more info! dstates@yorklibraries.org. Check out these cool pictures of the teens and I and Captain Dargo!

Equality Fest

The beginning of this month the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) group got to do something really unique and cool. They were able to attend the local Equality Fest that promoted equality of all kinds. I was so proud that the teens from GSA wanted to take part in this and that they showed up to help out and make a stand for equality! Read on for more information and pictures!

I scream, you scream, YAY! We made ice cream!

We all know that the summer can get pretty hot. What better way to beat the heat than with your very own ice cream!? That is exactly what we did here at the library. Making ice cream is a fun, easy (in a way, it is messy!), activity that is also a wonderful learning experience.

The teens and I made ice cream after our TAB (Teen Advisory Board) meeting. It does not take many ingredients because science comes into play and uses ice and salt. Adding salt to ice or water means the ice and water becomes a solvent. Salt in ice lowers the temperature of the ice, keeping it cooler and then enabling the other ingredients that make ice cream to become super cold, or ice cream!

Check out some pictures of the process below. Feel free to email me with questions, comments, or for directions! dstates@yorklibraries.org (Since this was not a Food Science activity, the science part was not stressed too much. I do not have any science notes, but this would be easy to pull together.)

Nostalgia Party!

Okay to put the sprinkles on the nostalgia cake, the teens wanted to top it off with a 90's party. (Yes, nostalgic about the 90's, I know....what) Anyway, this was a super awesome and fun party and super easy to do. These basic things that were done at this party can also be done for any decade and it is so easy to pull together! Basically you will need to pull off a similar decade party the following items: music from the decade, food from the decade (we got a popular cereal from the 90's, so it can be that simple), a couple of activities from the decade and then you are good to go! For the activities, we had musical chairs to 90's music, watched the Rugrats, colored Lisa Frank pages, had a 90's dress contest, and took some instax pics of the group. It was easy, fun, and well-liked! This could be done for multiple decades. Email me with questions or for more information! dstates@yorklibraries.org
Dawn states: Nirvana makes me nostalgic!

90's Dress contest winners! 

My boss in 90's dress! 

Group pics which we then printed using the Instax printer for that 90's feel! 

Ring pops and Lisa Frank! 

COOOOOKIE crisp! 

grunge 

TAB: Or what the Teens Want

How do you get in touch with your teens, find out their interests, and know what is current among them? Do you guess? Do you ask them? Do you look around and see what other teens are doing? While these are all good starting points, I really suggest starting a Teen advisory group. There are lots of catchy names for a group like this, but the bottom line is that it is created of teens who are active and invested in the library and who can give feedback on needs that they see or programs that they want.
The group of TAB (teen advisory board) at my library is really interested and engaged in the activities that happen here and some examples of some awesome things that happened because of their ideas are: Honey science, GSA, Art Clubs, and various other parties and activities. Even if the group of teens within the library is small, it is still good to put together a group like this and talk to them about ideas.
A simple way to organize the group is to have a snack, have a game, and then have an agenda and set meeting time. The set time helps them remember when it is and helps make sure that there are consistent results for whoever is leading the group, and the agenda helps them get started on topics, stay on task, makes sure everything gets covered, and gives them starting points for what to talk about.
This can be a really fun time for you and the teens to discover interests and have good ideas! For questions regarding starting a teen group, please email me at dstates@yorklibraries.org.

Dawn states: TAB.....cats, smoothies, silliness, ideas. It happens here.