Last Friday was the first Family Fun Night of the semester. Usually I get stuck with this "pleasure" for the first one because no student groups have signed up to host it. The first FFN this year just happened to be occurring after I had been back to campus for a grand total of 4 days.

As I did last year, I tried to pull the theme from the public library's summer reading club and use some sort of reading and craft that we did over the summer so I would already have a book selection and ideas for crafts because at the beginning of the semester when classes are just beginning I am not in the mood to be scrambling to come up with a craft project when I have to do the program in 2 days.

So the week drew near and I got back to campus. I went to see the people in the library almost immediately after I got back and unpacked so we could start doing more detailed planning. I didn't do a lot of story times this year so I had talked to the children's librarian back home to get some ideas.

What I ended coming up with was a library safari, since the public library summer reading program that summer had been READ on the Wild Side! I was going to read a couple of picture books about the jungle and have them make safari vests out of grocery bags before we went of on a safari in the library. I placed stuffed animals around the library with facts about each animal underneath. The kids' job was to find the animals and write down at least one fact about each one. They really seemed to enjoy it. I don't think the students who were actually using the library really appreciated it all that much though. I tried to keep the mayhem away from the side of the library that had most of the study tables, but I couldn't watch all 18 kids at once.

I was excited to see that the kids found a library experience fun (even if there was a little bit of learning snuck in.)