Musing Monday #2

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should Be Reading, in which book bloggers muse about about something related to books. (Usually.) Rants, raves, random thoughts are all welcome here. I personally will be using Musing Mondays to talk about my other job: being a middle school librarian.


Musing Mondays / School Library Updates

Welcome back!

Last week I updated you on the current status of my library. (Spoiler: It's gone.) This week I will share with you some of the plans I have for the new library! It's a bit hard because it is a middle school. (6th-8th grade.)

Students are still brought to the library weekly, BUT  they are getting to that point where they don't 'need' to read, so they just view this time as time to get out of class. With that being said, I want to make the library a place they WANT to be. Not just for reading (even though that would be awesome!) I want it to become the central heart of the school. So how can I do that?

The first thing I am doing is making a few 'centers.' I'm keeping my eyes out for garage sales in hopes to find a chess set, a checkers set, and some other small logic type games. I plan on spray painting them bright colors (pink and purple anyone?) and having them sit on a table year-round. Students can play a game with another, or simply move one piece and have it be an on-going game.

Theme:

This year, our district wide March Into Reading theme will be Camp Read. Which, is fitting because I wanted to do a Camp/outdoors theme anyways. So now I need to plan how to make the library camp-esque while still leaving enough in able to go 'over the top' during march.

My welcome back to the library boards will be bugs and critters and will say 'Catch the Reading Bug!' Right around spring I will change that to 'Dig into Reading!'

I want to get lanterns (chinese ones maybe? Tons of color!) And hang them up around the library, with white christmas lights strung up as well.

I will make owl decorations and create one bulleitin board to be the 'Hoot of the Week' and feature a teacher, and what book they are currently reading themselves. Hopefully. This might be a bit of work, since I would need to scrounge up pictures of them!

I also am going to grab this book and read it aloud to my kids. Who says middle school is too old to read a picture book to?

This is an example of what I want to do during March, but that is still a long way away.

Do you have any cute camp ideas for a middle school library? Let me know in the comments below!

Jenni