LEGO Librarians

Have you seen the official LEGO librarian minifigure?

Image taken from the LEGO website, link above.

It's pretty much exactly what you expect:  Female, glasses, cardigan, book in hand, and of course a cup labeled "Shhh."  But believe it or not, this is not actually what most librarians are like!  This stereotype has been around for decades, and sometimes it seems that no one except for the librarians themselves quite realizes that the profession is filled with a lot of different types of characters.

Joe Hardenbrook, a librarian at UW-Green Bay here in Wisconsin, saw this official minifigure and decided it just wasn't enough.  He created and photographed lots of other librarian personalities and then shared his creations, along with some snarky commentary, on his blog.  It's spectacular, and it seems pretty much spot-on.  I'm pretty sure that I've encountered most, if not all, of these sorts of librarians at some point.  Enjoy!

LEGO Christmas Ornaments

I wish that I could take credit for this idea, but unfortunately the real credit belongs to one of my dear co-workers who is in charge of our library's LEGO Club.  This week she asked the LEGO Club participants to each make a small figure that they could then turn into a Christmas ornament.  All it took to turn the figures into ornaments was a small loop of ribbon held between two interlocking bricks.  Voila!

Doesn't our tree look festive?

 

Santa Claus

Candle



This one looks a bit like a ghost, but you can
totally tell from the orange nose and the arms
that it's really a snowman.

Candy Cane.  Several kids made this shape!



Snowflake

Pictured here are some of my favorite creations and they're all showing a holiday/winter theme. But you could easily use any shape at all - a car, a small house, an animal - and hang that from your tree. The real trick here is to keep the figures small and lightweight. If they are too heavy the figures don't hang very well. 



Keva Planks

We have several fun programs planned for this week while the kids are off on Spring Break. One of them was a LEGO and Keva Open Play event.

Most people are familiar with LEGOs - those little bricks that can be used to build houses, vehicles, the Millennium Falcon, Hogwarts, or a variety of other original sculptures. We've known for ages that LEGOs are cool, and LEGO clubs have been hot programs at libraries for a couple of years now.

But Keva Planks are not nearly as well known. Actually, I'd never heard of them before starting this new job. But they're super cool! These simple wooden planks look a lot like the blocks used to play the game Jenga, but they are actually kind of ingenious in their construction. They're engineered to all be the exact same size and weight, which means that they will stack and balance perfectly. There's no need to sort a million tiny pieces because all of the planks are the same. And you can build anything!

Here are a couple of pictures of projects that I completed during our open play program. One of them was copied from the idea sheet that comes in the box, and he other was more or less my own design:











I have to say, building with the Keva Planks was incredibly relaxing. I found myself building repetitive geometric patterns and it proved soothing, much like a zen garden. It's so simple that anyone can do it no matter what their age or how shaky their hands are. And the planks have that great wood-smell too.

I'm a great advocate of just having fun with blocks like Keva Planks and LEGOs, but of course there are those who need to see that an activity like this is worth something "more." Fortunately, playing with blocks really is good for you! It's a great way for kids to learn skills in art, architecture, engineering, mathematics, and team building. Kids will literally build all of these skills without even trying as they construct new towers and sculptures with simple toy blocks.

LEGO Club: Vehicle Challenge

Last fall I talked about about the LEGO Club that I inherited when I started this job. The club has been meeting once each month, and this summer I decided that it was time to shake things up a bit. Last week at the June meeting I challenged the kids to build objects that met a certain theme: Vehicles. The kids in attendance got pretty creative, building cars, helicopters, chariots, and more. Here are just a few of the finished objects:




Finished creation from this LEGO Club meeting are also on display in the library for everyone to see. This public recognition is a great reward to the kids, and also conveniently serves as advertising for the club.

Yippee!

Today was another installment of LEGO Club, and once again I had a room full of school-age kids eagerly creating masterpieces out of colored bricks. At one point during the 1 1/2 hour Club time one of the boys asked me how much more time we had left. I reassured him that we had about 30 minutes left, so he had plenty of time to keep building. Pleased, the boy said, "Yippee!" and hurried off happily to have some more fun with the LEGOs.

I don't think I've ever heard the word "yippee" used in a sincere, non-sarcastic manner in my life. Hearing it come out of a 9-year-old's mouth was actually kind of awesome. Such honest jubilation, complete with an exclamation point or two tacked on the end, is actually a pretty challenging thing to vocalize. Phrases like "hooray" and "yippee" tend to sound a bit cheesy and, dare I say, a bit old fashioned when said out loud.

We have other words in the English language that accomplish the same thing as "yippee" that are used much more frequently in our society. "Awesome!" "Yeah!" "Cool!" "Woot!" "Gnarly, dude!" (I may be being a tad facetious on that last one.) But I'll be honest, it totally made me smile in a completely happy, non-sarcastic way to hear a good old-fashioned "Yippee!" here in the library.

LEGO Club

This past Saturday I had the privilege of holding my first LEGO Club meeting at the library!

The LEGO Club was actually started last spring by my predecessor. The club took a hiatus for the summer and met again for the first time a few days ago. The club is actually very informal. Basically I put out several buckets of LEGOs and let the kids go nuts. It's open to kids between the ages of 6-12, which is a pretty wide range but actually works pretty well for this event. We had several sibling pairs in attendance for our first meeting of the fall season. The kids started out working with their sibling(s), who they were the most comfortable with, and over the course of the hour slowly started intermingling and working with the other kids. That's one of the great things about this program: It really gives kids the chance to be creative and be social in a non-competitive environment. I didn't even really do anything to guide them - I just let the kids go to town and stood back to watch them have fun.

One thing I am going to change for next time is the length of the club's meeting. Past meetings were always an hour long, but I was met with loud groans when the hour was up. The kids were just getting into the swing of things! Next time we'll keep the doors open for a full hour and a half to give them some extra build time. I also need to see if I can buy a few extra pieces - big green boards are a must, as are more LEGO people.

This was such a great program and I'm excited to keep it going. I'm hoping that these kids will remain as enthusiastic about this even as I am!