This past year, my coworkers and I have been making an effort to connect with kids and families who aren’t usually able to attend our regular library storytimes and programs. We were already offering an evening Family Storytime once a week, as well as a Saturday one, and for many years we have been providing monthly storytimes at local preschools, but most of our in-library activities and special programs were still mostly scheduled during regular work hours, and tended to attract most of the same people.

At the beginning of last year, my coworker Rachel Evans suggested that we visit local aftercare programs, where kids go after school until their parents can pick them up. She reached out to each of them to schedule a time for us to visit once a month, and bring a simple staff-led activity. There turned out to be a LOT of programs, far more than one or two people could manage. In the end, most of our staff ended up signing up to cover a location, and we’ve even brought in some volunteers to help with the larger sites.

I’ve been surprised to see how many kids are in each of the aftercare programs. Some of them have over a hundred students. It’s been a lot of fun to get to know the kids at each location, and they are always excited for the change of routine, and a chance to be creative.

We’ve also created satellite library collections for each location. These are bins of 30 to 40 library books (we usually pull duplicate copies from our shelves to fill them) that are checked out to a library card created for that site. We tell the aftercare providers that they don’t have to worry about keeping track of the books, and that the kids are welcome to bring them home. We exchange the books for new ones at each visit. Yesterday I brought a bin to an aftercare program for the first time, and the kids were literally begging to look at the books. They were also eager to tell me what types of books they would like me to bring next time.

Here are some of the activities we have done with the aftercare sites so far:

• Decorate a bandana: We brought white bandanas and fabric markers, as well as pictures of different ways to use bandanas (neckerchiefs, head-scarves, headbands, hair ties, pirate-style, etc.).
• Beading: We brought pipe cleaners and a wide variety of pony beads, including alphabet beads. The kids loved making bracelets for themselves, as well as for their friends and family.
• Thumbprint art: We brought stamp pads, white paper, markers, and lots of baby wipes, along with examples of different animals and objects made from thumbprints, including Ed Emberley’s Thumbprint Art book. We also brought dot markers, for kids who didn’t want to get their fingers inky. Some of the kids enjoyed making artwork just with those.
• Button making: We brought our button maker, along with precut paper circles, markers, mylar circles, and pinback button supplies. The kids LOVE designing their own buttons, although operating the button machine can be a bit staff intensive.
• Bookmark decorating: We brought precut cardstock bookmarks, markers, and yarn to make tassels. The kids made lots of bookmarks for family and friends.
• Lego Drop Challenge: We brought bins of Legos and challenged the kids to make something with 20 pieces that could survive being dropped from a height of seven feet (we marked the feet on a wall). This was a HUGE hit at all of our sites.

A few tips that we’ve learned along the way:

• Keep the projects open-ended: Most of the day cares cater to a wide range of grade levels, so it’s better to provide activities that kids can participate in regardless of their age, reading abilities, etc. Also, because the groups tend to be large, with a lot of in-and-out, it’s best to avoid anything that requires a lot of instruction.
• Stick to generic supplies: We’ve found that it’s best to stick to projects where the supplies don’t have special designs, like stickers where there might be only a few of a particular kind.
• It helps to provide some pictures or samples of different ways to do the activity: With the bandana decorating, some of the kids weren’t interested until they saw all of the different ways they could wear the bandana. Then suddenly we had several excited groups of bandits, pirates, and cowboys, along with several headbands and hair ties.
• Encourage kids to make the activity their own: I always tell the kids that they don’t have to do the project the way I did it. Often they will take the materials in a whole new direction. One day, I brought pipe cleaners to an aftercare so that they could make animal sculptures, and one of the girls made a pipe cleaner pumpkin instead. Soon they all wanted to learn how to do that. She taught me how to do it, and I ended up making it part of a Halloween program at the library a few weeks later. The same girl used the yarn from our bookmark decorating activity to do some finger knitting, and soon all the kids wanted to try that too. It’s always so much fun to see them finding inspiration from each other.

Overall, the outreach has been incredibly successful. I’ve even been seeing some of the aftercare kids visiting the library with their parents. It’s always really gratifying to hear them say, “You came to my daycare!”

Do you have any activities that have been successful at aftercare sites or other locations? Please share them in the comments below.