Legos!

If you're attending this year's Summer Reading Workshops, you'll most likely stop by my table during our round robin sessions. Lego's are great to tie into programming for this year's Summer Reading theme: One World, Many Stories.  You may be asking what legos have to do with 'One World, Many Stories." Well boys and girls, Legos were invented in Denmark.

In 2009, one of my staff members, Allyson, got crafty and decided to have our preschoolers paint with legos. You can pretty much paint with anything, but painting with legos is pretty cool.  Since MAPL is on Main Street which is very walkable, our director at the time really like hanging things crafted by children in the front window of the library for all to see. We rolled out the large roll of white bulletin board paper and had the kids paint on that, then hung those creations throughout the library.

They also painted a smaller work of art to take home.

This summer we're going to do the program again, but we'll add a surprise at the end with a lego pinata. I found this pinata in the Family Fun magazine. It's a shirt box that's painted. You can cut down paper towel rolls or toilet paper rolls and use them as the connectors. The best part is that there is no trying to shove a bunch of stuff into a little hole of a pinata. Open up the shirt box- put all of your goodies inside, and then hot glue the box shut. Based on past experiences with pinatas, I think I'll be adding some strings to the bottom for the children to take turns pulling since that usually lessens the chance of the children accidentally whacking each other when trying to whack the pinata.

Other libraries are now offering a regular lego program for school aged children. Most libraries provide the legos so that everybody has the same amount, and then give them a challenge. For example, during one session they might build a castle and at another they might build a ship. While donations might seem like a great way to go, I've been hearing from a lot of librarians out there that legos are very difficult for people to give up. It might be worth it to just shell out the money and buy a few sets for the library to use.