Minecraft in Review

The other big program we had this month was Minecraft Madness. You may remember me discussing this a few weeks back as a future event... well it finally happened, and now we can visit it in review!

(Disclaimer: we were pretty neglectful in getting pictures. What we have is courtesy of a fellow staff member who came in at the very beginning--when we only had a handful of attendees--and me frantically taking pictures of things during the last 5 minutes. So you'll probably notice so repeat photos from the days leading up to the event. Sorry guys!)

Pretty home-made flier.

As I mentioned before, this program was the brainchild of my coworker and friend, Ashley. (Check out her blog, where she posts book reviews and discusses upcoming releases. Pretty cool stuff!) She's very much behind getting Minecraft in libraries and has even been advocating to get the PC version on our teen computers. The funny thing is... she's never played the game (besides a brief crash-course/training I gave her). Which is why I was pulled in to help out; which I had an absolute blast doing!

Take-home reminder cubes.

We decided to run Minecraft Madness arcade-style. Each station the kids visited was worth a ticket. Some (more complicated stations) earned them two tickets. They got to use their tickets toward a variety of prizes and books, or they could enter their tickets into a raffle for gift cards to Barns & Noble or Game Stop.

There was a station for them to make their own mini minecraft chests. A few of them got creative and made an ender chest... which I kind of wish I had planned for. But alas, I overlooked that particular update! All is well though; the kids made it work.

A well loved (read, "messy") chest-making station.

Ashley inspecting a chest. (Notice our spider decor?)

We also had a design station for them to make their own Steve skins or deign their own minecraft buildings using grid paper. I printed some suggestions for skins and a key of all the minecraft blocks since some of the kids, inevitably, were new to the game. In a way, this served as a learning space as well as a design station.

The next--arguably most popular--station was the perler bead station. I printed out all the different minecraft weapons and tools (ones that were simple enough to build with perlers) to serve as templates, and the kids got to make their own minecraft perler things! We had some venturous kids make their personalized Steve heads and some emeralds and diamonds too, but mostly they stuck with swords and bows. My job was to iron all the little perlers together (as well as mend some finished weapons that got snapped), so I was able to see all of their amazing creations.

Shovel in progress!

Finished tools (and their prize tickets) cooling after being fused.

The original idea was to turn them into key chains, but somewhere during setup I lost the jump rings! So instead, I sent the kids home with a key ring and instructions about how to attach it using things from home. Most of the parents were very understanding about this misstep, but I still feel bad.

Another station we had was a papercraft station. Here we had dozens of sheets of papercraft for the kids to make. If you made a cube papercraft (element blocks, slimes, pumpkins, etc.) you got one ticket. If you ventured to try making a mob or Steve papercraft, you could get two tickets! I saw a lot of cubes. We did find one Steve leg during clean up but we never found the rest of him; poor guy.

Making a tiny papercraft weapon.

There was also an option at the papercraft station to make a 6" paper torch. These were the perfect size for a single glow stick (which we provided) to fit inside of and light up, sort of like a real torch! I think just about everyone made one of those. In retrospect, I hope they didn't close up their torch with the glow stick inside, or that they snapped it before they did. Otherwise they're going to have to destroy their torch in order to make it glow. Oops!

Putting together some torches.

Our last--most amazing--station was the game itself. My husband and I (with some help from an awesome friend and coworker) spent 26+ hours outside of work building a world for the kids that had all the supplies they'd need, as well as a spawn house, and a number of mini games for them to compete in. I discussed before how this whole plan was nearly botched, so I won't address that again here; suffice to say that the first 30 minutes of the program were especially stressful.

Our troubleshooting team in deep contemplation.
Also... I'm dressed as Steve! (Sort of.)

The mini games included:

• A boat race, complete with glowstone lined tunnel
• An archery range (which I overheard the kids say was, "actually kind of hard")
• A version of King of the Ladder with a water pit for softer landings
• A caving race where the kids competed to find the hidden wool in a cave
• A player vs. player battle arena ringed in fire
• And... DEATH HOUSE!

I have to brag a little here, because death house is amazing. My husband built this masterpiece; It's three levels of intense zombie battle. When you enter death house you are immediately sealed in. You grab your gear and head in to level one where dispensers release a hoard of zombies for you to fight. Once they're defeated you enter the next hallway, grab more supplies (and golden apples), and head to level two: more zombies, less room to run. After level two you leave through a hallway of lava, grab more supplies and drop down a pit to enter level three: more zombies, even less room, obstacles, and lava! If you survive level three, you win and take the hugely long (level three is at bedrock) spiral staircase back to the surface. Meanwhile, death house resets itself and is ready for the next victim  player to enter.

Sorry, they're not in death house. They're searching caves for wool.

Once the kids got over their initial fear of death house it became the most popular mini game we made! I had more than one kid insisting that my husband should put the plans online so they could build their own death house. I'm so proud of my husband and his redstone skills! And there was a massive amount of that stuff wiring the whole thing, let me tell you!

Working our creative marketing muscles!

And that was our Minecraft Madness program, in a nutshell! The age-range was possibly the hardest I've ever worked with, but oh so rewarding! Pre-teens are quick to criticize and slow to listen, but when they like something they let you know beyond a shadow of a doubt; and this program was definitely a hit!

Frustrating Developments

After some reflection I decided it would be beneficial to look into policies concerning professional blogs for employees. There are none; at least not as of right now. Which means I have been advised to proceed on the side of extreme caution. As such, you may notice that some pictures have been taken down or edited from recent posts. As much as I love showing you all the fun the kids have at our programs... it's not advisable to do so at this time.

I plan to continue blogging and maintain the same quality in my posts as I have been, while considering my limitations. And I sincerely hope you all will continue on this journey with me! Thank you all for being amazing.

Winter Wrap-Up

It's time to review some programs again! I finished this one at the beginning of the month, but it's taken me a while to come 'round to posting about it. Mostly because there is just so much to say.

The flier and handout I made to advertise.

This program was based on an episode of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic (MLP). In this episode the ponies work together to clean up winter and make way for spring. Literally. So when I planned it, I basically wanted us to go through all the activities the ponies did to make way for spring.

These are the episode's big events:

• Cloud Clearing (clearing the snow clouds from the sky)
• Nest Designing (building nests for birds returning from the south)
• Ice Scoring (breaking up ice on frozen ponds so it melts faster)
• Waking Animals (waking up the hibernating animals)
• Snow Clearing (clearing the snow from the fields)

We made 3' paper ponies (and a smaller Spike) to decorate the room.

Before we started the episode themed activities, we had to get into character. So we started with a raft for the ids to make their own pony tails out of yarn and elastic bands (I tied them roughly child-waist-sized prior to the program) and ears out of craft foam and headbands so they could all dress like ponies. I also painted a cutie mark of their choice on their face. (Rainbow Dash was the most popular... Rarity was a close second.)

All decked out for pony partying!

Honestly...  this process took forever! Nearly the entire first hour. If I could redo this, I'd have an extra staff member or two (I already had one... thanks Susan!) to help run things and double up on painting. I also wish I had played Winter Wrap-Up or other MLP episodes during this time. Thankfully, a group of girls had their own My Little Pony sing-a-long and one mom started playing episodes on her phone for the kids to watch while everyone waited.

The kids (and parents) got really creative during the poniefication process. They used scraps of foam to add unicorn horns and used adhesive foam to make wings... I wish I had been creative enough to actually intend for the foam scraps to be used as such. I didn't have enough supplies for everyone to have wings and/or horns. Actually... it was just scrap foam we had in the craft closet! Clearly I need to reassess my foam usage.

Check out the wings on a little Rainbow Dash.

Now let me tell you about our activities.

We started with a short cloud clearing game. This activity didn't feature prominently in the episode but it was mentioned, and I still wanted to use it. So I made 10 white tissue paper balls and got out my giant parachute. I told the kids we had to catch all of the clouds (i.e. tissue paper balls) and try to keep them on the parachute as we bounced them. I had them follow simple movement instructions and had them count the clouds both when I tossed them onto the parachute and when we collected them. After that I had the grown ups take over and gave the kids a little time to play underneath the parachute because, really... who doesn't love that!?

Ponies ready to catch some clouds!

Having fun under the parachute!

I combined the ice and snow assignments into loose versions of relay races. For the ice I pulled out a cooler filled with ice cubes and had the kids take turns balancing the cubes on spoons and running them to the other end of the room where there were containers for them to drop their cubes into. Then they ran back and passed their spoon on to someone else.

Explaining the game.

Snow went about the same way. I bought some instant snow and the kids had an absolute blast when I brought it out! (Actually, they were really excited about the ice too. Who would have guessed?) They were mesmerized just gathering around and running their fingers through the stuff! Honestly, so was I; that stuff is amazing! But I digress. We ran a relay similar to the ice one, but we used cups instead of spoons and had larger containers at the end of the room. At first I panicked about snow spillage... but the snow turns into powder once the water evaporates out of it and you can vacuum it right up!

Filling the containers with snow.

I very nearly caused a revolt when the kids thought I had forgotten about the nest building activity! Who ever said kids don't pay attention to what they see on TV? This was a very simple craft. You just take a brown paper lunch bag and start rolling the edges down from the top... viola! Nest! I had them add string bits and green paper "leafs" into their nests to make them pretty and cozy for the baby birds. We were going to make chicks for the nests too, but at this point we were running short on time, so we kept it simple: no chicks.

Demonstrating the technique.

Lining their nests with yarn.

For our waking hibernating animals activity, we added a small educational twist. After all, we are a library! So we made a bunch of hibernating animals and hid them around the room. On their mark the kids each retrieved an animal and returned to the rug. Then I described one animal at a time and the kids with that animal brought them up to me and I discussed an interesting fact about their particular animal.

All the hedgehogs; safely found.

After completing all of our Winter Wrap-Up activities, we had the children finish up by making their own achievement badges. I had stiff felt rectangles with broach pins hot glued to them. The kids were able to cut the rectangles into whatever base design they wanted and glue felt shapes to the front of their badge; I saw lots of hearts and leaves.

Gluing the heart to her badge.

Badge design in progress.

And that was the MLP Winter Wrap-Up program! It was very popular. Due to a glitch in our online registration, we had almost double the attendance we expected, but it all worked out and everyone had a great time!

Susan (right) and I (left) posing with our pony twins.

This Week:

This week has been a frenzy of activity for me. I've been working on writing a post for you all about the Winter Wrap-Up program from the beginning of the month, but I just haven't been able to finish it; and definitely not this week!

All of this week has been just a whirlwind of preparation for this weekend... and now I can breathe a sigh of relief because it's over!

Friday was the system-wide DIY Teen Tech program. Each branch came up with an activity station and we all set up tables and had a workshop-style program for the teens. There were some pretty cool stations. We had stations for the teens to build clocks using old CDs, use electronic paint to make greeting cards with lights and circuits, learn to use a green screen, etc. Our location did two tables. One on coding and hacking and one where the teens tested a variety of life hacks, then made their own wifi amplifier. We had a pretty good turn out, and everyone got pizza. So win-win, right?

Teens enjoying our coding and hacking station.

Making a wifi amplifier.

Saturday was our Minecraft Madness program. So intense. I'm going to write a real post on this later, so I'll keep this brief. We had 15 teens and tons of crafts and activities for them. My husband and I build an awesome world full of mini games for the teens to take turns playing. 26+ hours of prep-work, and it was almost shot to heck by two problems:

We made 100+ reminder cubes for the program.

First, when we transferred the file to the library's Xbox it got all messed up. There were hundreds of trees in places they weren't before; some of my blocks were gone or had changed; there was even a lake in the middle of the archery range I built! Turns out the library Xbox hadn't been updated in ages. My husband updated it, but the damage to the world was done. We couldn't re-copy the correct file for whatever reason. But we made it work!

Second, our HDMI cords were missing. We spent 30 minutes of the program rushing around trying to find a spare HDMI cord so the kids could play in two-player. It doesn't make much sense to have a bunch of player vs. player mini game and then only have one player at a time! Thankfully my hubby designed this amazing death house that they could go through on single player. It was a big hit before and after we found the needed cord.

Hangin' out at spawn house. It's safer there.

Today the TAG (Teen Advisory Group) teens and I did training for an upcoming program. We learned about making Ukrainian-style (pansky) eggs and made our own demos. The process is pretty complicated, so we really have to know what we're doing before we can assist people during the program in April. It took a lot of patience, but the results are really neat! I kind of hope I have a chance to make another (read, "better") one at the program.

My egg attempt. I think it's kind of pretty!

And that is the culmination of my busy week! I think I'll take a nap now; then on to the next amazing program: Jedi Training Day!

Wow. Just... Wow!

I am floored you guys! Just floored! I wrote my last post in hopes that people would contact me with ideas and assistance for our upcoming program, but something very different happened... the post blew up!

Now don't get excited. We're far from going viral or anything. But that one post got almost 200% more page views than any other post I've written this far! Amazing!

When I first posted Upcoming Shenanigans I said the format would be the exception to the rule; my plan was to post reviews of finished programs rather than plans for future ones. And while that'll still be the case, I sure won't hesitate to share the works in progress anymore!

Coincidentally, I was planning another sneak peek post for later this month. I need to share my plans with a specific group and this seems like the prime forum for that. Especially now that I've seen how much you all love sneak peeks!

So keep your eyes and ears peeled. Something Star Wars this way comes!

Upcoming Shenanigans

Hello again everyone. It looks like I missed my Thursday post day... again. Wednesday was All Staff Training Day, so Thursday wound up being one massing game of catch-up! But more on that later.

I'm going to do something today that I haven't done before and likely won't do again (or at lease very often)... I'm going to discuss a program BEFORE it happens. *gasp of disbelief* However, I'm doing this for a very specific reason: to let some very specific people know what we're doing in hopes that they will be able to help us out a little.

And so I present to you Minecraft Madness!

Our flier! Share it with your friends.

This was actually the brain child of another colleague/friend of mine, Ashley. (Also, you all need to check out her blog too!) The funny thing is she's never played Minecraft. Still hasn't! We are in the process of scheduling an intro training. However, Ashley has read a lot about Minecraft in libraries and she is currently pushing for us to get Minecraft installed on our teen computers (cross your fingers). So I guess she liked the concept... and thus she grabbed me; because I know the game.

Our displays...
The cubes have program details on them!

So after much brainstorming we came up with a few base crafts/activities:

• Making tools/weapons with perler beads (which can then be turned into keychains)
• Making tiny Minecraft chests (we still haven't tested that one)
• Minecraft papercraft (because it's "all the rage," super easy, and kind of awesome)
• Designing your own Steve skins
• 2D house design (using grid paper and colored pencils)
• And possibly a station for viewing Minecraft vids on YouTube (still working on that)

Perler bead demo... I didn't get to fuse them, but they're not too bad!

But the biggest obstacle we faced (and still do) is that we wanted to actually have a station for the teens to play the game. We have 2 Xboxes (yes, I know all you Minecraft purists just gagged a little... but we're working with what we have!) but even with all our controllers and devices, that's only 4 kids who can play. I can't guarantee, but I get the feeling that the game would end up being monopolized by a small few. So I came up with the idea of making the whole event arcade style!

The teens will get tickets for completing each station, then bring them to the "crafting table" to exchange them for prizes! This may not seem like a solution to the problem at hand, but here it is: we can turn the game into a 1 to 2 player speed challenge. We can set up a few challenges for solo, player vs. player, and/or co-op play. Then when their challenge is over, they get their ticket and let the next group go and rotate through thusly!

Now we face a new challenge: what games/challenges should we offer? We have some time to set things up in advance. I want to have king of the ladder (because MindCrack is the best), and we'll probably have something like, "who can dig down to bedrock and get back up first using only wooden tools," but we're looking for more.

My scary "help us" face!

So, if any of you out there know of some fun games/challenges we can build on Minecraft, please please send us the suggestions! We'll take links to ideas, videos, comments... anything! Keep in mind, I'm building with a beginner here, so we'll need a few simpler things for her to work on, but I'm not adverse to a little redstone mechanics myself (although I'm still pretty new to it)... and we can always enlist my hubby to help us build, since he's a redstone fan.

And to all of you out there who aren't sure I was speaking English... you defiantly need to come to our program on the 22nd! You don't know what you're missing.

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

It’s the summer of 1906 and Mattie Gokey has escaped her life on her family’s struggling farm for a paid summer job at a fancy Adirondack hotel on the shores of Big Moose Lake. Torn between following her dreams of being a writer and leaving for Barnard College in New York City, and her feelings of responsibility toward her family and budding romance with the handsome Royal Loomis, Mattie spends the hot summer serving the patrons of the hotel in silent contemplation.

But Mattie’s thoughts are turned upside down when a couple staying at the hotel goes missing and when the young woman, ultimately, turns up dead. The same young woman who urgently pressed a packet of letters into Mattie’s keeping only a short time before.

Left with resounding questions about life, death, and the future, Mattie begins to read the letters and slowly understands the fate of the young woman and realizes what Mattie wants for her own life.

Based around the real-world murder of Grace Brown, Jennifer Donnelly creates an unparalleled coming of age story. If you like A Northern Light, try Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen or The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, all available at the Virginia Beach Public Library. Find more great reviews like these at www.VBPLrecommends.blogspot.com.

What a Week!

Wow guys! What a week!

So it looks like I missed Content Thursday or this week; I'm sorry. It had been crazy this week! Lets see if we can hit the highlights:

• The end of the fiscal year snuck up on us and the teen programmers had to scramble to determine their supply lists for the next several months (until we have funds again), buy supplies, and turn in receipts.

A sneak peek of some of the fun (i.e. decorations) at Saturday's Winter Wrap-Up program.

• Saturday was the Winter Wrap-Up program (that's a My Little Pony thing, in case any of you didn't know) and I was madly trying to get my supply list approved (since the person doing the approval was out for several days), arrange all the activities, and cut and paste the "mane" 6 +Spike. Not to mention actually setting up and hosting the program. It was a great event and we learned TONS (per usual)... keep your eye open for more Winter Wrap-Up deals soon!

• Program proposals for June, July, and August are now due. So I've also been trying to plan programs several months in advance while trying to provide an even program spread for all ages. The CL programmers meet Monday to square away the details. So much to do, so little time!

Testing one of the crafts for MineCraft Madness!

• The MineCraft Madness program is also fast approaching! However our unusual number of snow days have thrown a monkey wrench into the works. So we've been feverishly rescheduling and revamping our plans to fit a much shorter time frame. Currently, the flier is almost ready for display and registration starts soon. Sign up for this (and other great programs) at www.vbgov.com/libraries-events.

• Plus, the library has been especially poppin' lately. It seems that tax season is upon us... and mayhem ensues. The AARP organization graciously comes into our library Monday through Saturday to assists people with tax preparation for free. It's a great deal but it nearly doubles out door count! And with so many people waiting to get their taxes done, there's more than enough to keep us on our toes.

A chipmunk face to make everyone smile... except me.

• Not to mention that I'm still recovering from my wisdom tooth four-for-all and subsequent infection (only minor), so I'm spending much more of my at-home time sleeping and healing. You'd be surprised how much energy your body uses to close up holes in your mouth.

Its been a wild week. I look forward to sharing more about the Winter Wrap-Up program and telling your about our impending All Staff Training Day in the weeks to come. Also, I've been toying with making my first video post for you all. I'd like to share some ukulele tips and maybe been a song or two!

Stay tuned and bear with me. I'm bound and determined to make this blog a success!