Fall Program Recap: American Girl Club

Right at the end of last summer, my library did a bit of job restructuring. What it means is that I'm no longer responsible for planning and executing as many programs and my collection development duties have increased significantly. So, there might not be as many program recaps on the blog as there have been. I haven't stopped programming entirely, but I have decreased my efforts.

One of the programs that continues to be successful is our bimonthly American Girl Club. It's not a huge amount of work and I team with a coworker for it, so I'll be continuing this program indefinitely. We held two sessions in the fall. Here is what we did at each!

For our season kick-off, we focused on 2014's Girl of the Year, Isabelle. She is a creative girl who attends a prestigious arts school. We are lucky to have a real ballerina as one of our teen volunteers, so we focused our program on Isabelle's dancing. Our ballerina taught them the basic positions and a few basic exercises, which they really enjoyed. Then we made tutus for their dolls and watched videos of the brilliant Misty Copeland. I think our attendees actually enjoyed every part of this program and it was incredibly easy. Thanks to our lovely ballerina!

The second fall American Girl Club taught the girls about Kit and the Great Depression (they're always so cheerful, aren't they?). We listened to Little Orphan Annie (just like Kit would have), ate oatmeal raisin cookies (something simple and wholesome), and make clothespin dolls. We also had the girls bring in canned goods to donate to the local food pantry. Our attendance was a little bit lower than usual for this one, though Kit was one of the most requested girls. I'm not sure if we didn't have enough planned in our presentation, but the girls seemed to finish their crafts quickly this time around. We ended up watching some of the film adaptation of Annie to fill time.

We had a bit of a strange fall at the library - most of our program numbers were way down and even our circulation seemed down. But this program is the most consistently attended, so we'll be continuing with it the rest of the school year and probably next as well.