Star Wars Reads Day 2015

Guys, it's been awhile.  It's not that I haven't had interesting library stories to tell, it's just that I've been too busy to stop and tell them.

But I like to document what I've done, and since I don't believe in reinventing the wheel I think it's important that I contribute to the conversation in case someone else out there might be able to benefit from my experience.  So I'm going to try and start this up again.  Bear with me as I try to get back in the swing of things.



To kick things off, I want to talk a bit about Star Wars Reads Day.  We participated in this awesome national event for the third year in a row, and this was by far our best year yet.  We had huge attendance, which was a bit surprising because the weather was so beautiful and I know we actually lost several families to the pumpkin farm as a result.  Many of the activities were the same ones I had used in years past (balloon lightsabers, fortune Wookies, stick puppets, word search, trivia, memory, and a checklist to keep it all straight), which made planning super easy.  I did revamp an old favorite activity and added two new ones to keep things interesting:

Yoda Ears and Princess Leia Buns 

 
I borrowed this idea from Amy at Catch the Possibilities.  I made my own templates because I wanted to tweak Amy's design and printed the ears and buns off on construction paper.  I also cut two-inch strips of paper that could be fashioned into headbands.  The kids could cut out the ears/buns themselves, and then make headbands.  The Yoda ears were the most popular of the two options, but I was glad to have two different choices for this activity.

Scavenger Hunt

The scavenger hunt has been an old standby for the past few years, and while the kids love it and I love how it gets them to visit all areas of the library, I wanted to change things up a bit.  I borrowed the new format for the hunt from that same blog post that I linked to above and tweaked it just a bit.  I found pictures of eleven different characters and used Publisher to put a letter of the alphabet with each one.  These were cut out, laminated, and hung around the library.  Each kid got a worksheet that listed all of the places where they needed to look to find characters.  When they found the character, they needed to write down the corresponding letter of the alphabet in the appropriate box.  When all were found, they had a message from Master Yoda.  The kids could turn in their completed worksheets and get a bookmark as a prize.

Costumed Characters

This year, thanks to one of our awesome library regulars, we finally were able to get a few awesome members of the local 501st and Rebel Legion to join us for our celebration.  These guys were a big hit!  They spent two full hours in costume hanging out with the kids, taking pictures, watching the kids put on shows with their puppets, and generally just being awesome.  As a bonus, these organizations always advertise through their own outlets where they will be making appearances, so we got a little extra advertising for our event by working with them.  I know of at least two families who came to the library that day specifically because they had seen that the 501st would be there through their Facebook page.

Notes about costuming:

Yes, that's me in the Princess Leia costume.  I like to let my geek flag fly a bit at events like this.  :)

The clone trooper and Sabine (the two characters on the right in the above picture) were my contacts with the 501st and Rebel Legion.  They are parents to one of our long-time library regulars, and dad (the clone trooper) joined up with both organizations last year.  Mom, who is the parent we usually see, just completed her costume and I think might be joining the Rebel Legion in an official capacity soon.  Having people that we know who were already invested in the library as a contact was a huge help!  I was able to talk with our trooper friend before I submitted my request for characters to appear at the library to find out what times work best for people and when other groups were having their events that day to maximize the likelihood that we'd get a good response.  You certainly don't need to have a personal contact like this if you want to try to get the 501st and/or Rebel Legion to make an appearance at your event, but having this personal contact had some nice perks, especially since there are so many local events on Star Wars Reads Day.

Star Wars Reads Day 2014

October 11 was Star Wars Reads Day, and for the second year I put together a program at the library to celebrate the event.  After getting some experience under my belt with this program last year, it was definitely easier to put everything together this time around.  Several of the activities that we did this year (the scavenger hunt, trivia contest, balloon lightsabers, and thumb doodle bookmarks) were reused or re-adapted from last year's program which made pulling things together a snap.  I did, however add a few activities to the mix to keep things interesting:

Activities Checklist

One thing that I had noticed at last year's program was that while we had lots of kids come into our main programming room to do our craft projects, many of the kids weren't visiting the Children's Room to look at the Star Wars book display.  This was a problem for me because in my mind, the book display was the main reason for having this event in the first place!  To encourage the kids to come into the Children's Room I did two things:  First, I put a few quieter activities in the Children's room to lure them in.  I also created a checklist of all of the activities (including checking out books!) that kids could try.  Kids who tried at least three activities could also drop off their checklists and be entered into a raffle for some Star Wars books.  This system seemed to work out really well.  Kids wandered around the library looking for different activities to try, and we had a lot more books get checked out compared to last year.

Fortune Wookies

A Fortune Wookie was featured in Tom Angelberger's third Origami Yoda book, The Secret of the Fortune Wookie.  This piece of origami is perhaps better known to most of us as a cootie catcher or fortune teller and in this case is styled to resemble the character Chewbacca.  Angelberger provides a printable template with instructions that kids can use to create their own Fortune Wookies.  I put these out along with some scissors and let the kids go to town.

Star Wars Stick Puppets

I found a PDF full of cute Star Wars printables here.  (Note:  When you follow this link, please scroll down to find the links to download the printables.  Don't use the big green "download here" button at the top of the page!  That's an add for something else entirely.)   One of my favorite activities, which I found in the first pack, was a set of printable, stylized Star Wars characters.  These characters could be cut out and then glued onto a craft stick to make an instant puppet.  I had been looking for another craft that would be preschool-friendly, and this project was a perfect fit since the puppets are very simple to make.  I also set up a table and wrapped it with a "skirt" (actually a couple of big black garbage bags) and encouraged kids to use the area as a stage and put on puppet shows once they were finished.  It took a little bit of prodding to get most of the kids to use the puppet stage, but once they warmed up to the idea it worked wonderfully.  It was super cute, and I like that it encouraged a bit of imaginative play and storytelling.

Star Wars Memory

Do you know how the game of Memory works?  Cards are laid face-down in a grid on a table.  Players take turns flipping over two of the cards.  If the cards match, then you get to keep the cards and take another turn.  If the cards do not match, then you flip the cards face-down again and it's the next person's turn.  Play continues until all cards are matched up, and the player with the most matches wins.

The pack of Star Wars printables that I mentioned earlier also contained the printouts needed for the Memory game.  Just print the sheets on cardstock and cut them apart to make your deck.  If you wanted to you could laminate the cards to make them extra durable, but I chose to skip this step and didn't have any problems.  Since I made two sets of cards, I put a different colored sticker on the back of each set to make things easier for me when they inevitably got mixed up.  I just put the cards out on the tables along with some basic instructions and let families go to town.  One thing that I especially liked about this activity was the way it got kids and parents to really interact with each other, rather than the parents just watching their kids have fun.

Star Wars Word Search

I wanted one more simple activity so I created a word search using this website.  There are lots of free online tools like this, but the thing that I especially liked about this one was that the "words" that I wanted to kids to search for could include spaces, allowing me to have the kids search for full character names like "Darth Vader" and "Han Solo."  I just came up with the words that I wanted included in the puzzle, plugged them into the website, and had it generate the word search for me.  I coppied their generated search onto a Publisher document and then added a few images, a heading, and of course the library's name.  Once I settled on this particular puzzle maker it took me all of about 10 minutes to create the word search.  Easy!


As always, Star Wars Reads Day was a great success.  Our total attendance was actually down slightly from last year, a fact that I attribute to the days' unseasonably warm and sunny weather.  Even if the numbers were down, however, we still had a solid turnout and the kids who did attend all had a great time.

Star Wars Reads Day

On October 5 my library was able to participate in the national Star Wars Reads Day event.  The event at my library was one of hundreds of events taking place all over the country, and one of four events in the local two-county area.  It was lots of fun!  The program was fairly well attended, with an estimated 40 children and their corresponding adults in attendance.

Several stations were set up in different areas of the library, each with a different Star Wars activity to try.  The idea was that kids could wander from activity to activity at their own pace, picking and choosing what they wanted to try.

Three crafts were set up in our Community Room under the supervision of a few teen volunteers.  Generally, the crafts took care of themselves and kids could easily complete them on their own or with a parent's assistance.  The teens were mostly there to be the authority figure in the room and offer assistance if needed.

First, we did some Star Wars origami.

I copied the instructions for Yoda, Darth Vader, and R2-D2 from the Origami Yoda books by Tom Angleberger.  These designs are, in the grand scheme of origami, very easy to follow.  Yoda only requires five easy folds to complete, so even very young children were able to create some origami with a little help. No fancy origami paper required:  Angleberger's designs are all intended to be made with scrap paper, so I simply cut colored computer paper into fourths.  Crayons and markers were set out along with the colored paper so that kids could add details to their creations.


The second craft project was taken from the Star Wars Thumb Doodles book published by Klutz.

I purchased a copy of the book and set it out along with some blank cardstock bookmarks (we had some pre-cut left over from a past program, but you could easily cut your own cardstock too), stamp pads, and markers, and wipes for clean up.  The kids were invited to copy the designs included in the book and create their own bookmarks.  They did a great job!


Finally, kids were invited to make their own lightsabers using twister balloons and toilet paper tubes.  I discovered this project here.

This was a super easy project that, while appealing for all ages, was especially well-suited for our youngest attendees.  It was probably also our most popular activity of the day!  Amazingly enough, we didn't have a single popped balloon outside of the Community Room were the lightsabers were constructed.


Outside of the craft room we had a scavenger hunt throughout the library.

Ten different characters were hidden in plain sight in different areas of the library.  Each child was given a worksheet listing all of the places where they needed to look for a character.  When they found the character, they simply needed to write the name of the character next to the location where it was found.  Some of these names were a tad writing-intensive ("Chewbacca" has a lot of letters!), but very young children all had help from their parents if they needed it and no one complained at all about the writing.  Kids who turned in their scavenger hunt sheets to the Reference Desk were entered into a drawing for a few Star Wars book prizes.


We also had a big book display set up in the Children's Room.  Our smaller programming room adjacent to the Children's Room was set up as a special reading area.

I had been hoarding some of these Star Wars books for awhile in anticipation of the display, so I had lots of books ready to go.  The Darth Vader costume came courtesy of one of my co-workers whose son had dressed as Vader for Halloween the year before.  The reading area was not as well used and I would have preferred (I blame some staffing issues that made it difficult to really inform kids that the reading room was an option), but a decent number of books were checked out on the day of this program.  Good thing - the Star Wars book are the whole point of the event!


Finally, there was also an activity for adults.  Our Reference department put together a trivia contest to challenge fans of the franchise.  While the Reference department had adults in mind when they created the contest, they did allow kids to participate too.  Anyone who wanted to play simply had to answer eleven questions.  Most of these questions were multiple choice, but a handful required you to write in your answer.  The person who answered the most questions correctly won a lovely Star Wars prize pack.

All in all, the program was a great success!  Everyone seemed to have a great time.  We had decent number of kids come to the program in costume, which made it all the more fun.  Tiny Darth Vaders, Clone Troopers, Jedi, and Ewoks always make programs more exciting.  I'm hoping that we can participate in the Star Wars Reads Day event again next year - and hopefully get some of the "pro" costumed characters from the 501st Legion to attend as well!

Star Wars Origami

This is what I did at work not too long ago:

Apologies for the awkward shadows.

Star Wars origami!  From left to right:  Yoda, R2-D2, and Darth Vader.

I've been a bit busy lately planning a program in honor of the second annual Star Wars Reads Day, which will be taking place on Saturday, October 5.  This is a national event with programs taking place across the country.  If you are interested in finding a Star Wars Reads Day program near you, be sure to ask around at our local libraries, bookstores, and convention centers.

The program that I am planning for my library will feature some Star Wars crafts like the origami pictured above, a scavenger hunt, some trivia, and of course a big book display and plenty of space to read.  Watch this space for more info about the program after October 5!