Our teen programmer is out for a few months on maternity leave, so while I’ve got some programming downtime, I’m helping cover her programs for a bit. This week I led my first teen anime/manga club after sitting in with her last month to see how it’s done. It was very chill and the teens did not require much of me (which is totally fine)! We watched Spy x Family and made Perler Bead art and honestly, I probably enjoyed it just as much as they did!
Since regular programs are on hiatus this month, I’m doing a few special events and this week, we hosted a Stuffed Animal Sleepover. I’ve wanted to do this for probably over a decade since the beginning of my library career and I’m so excited about it!
The program was divided into two parts: the drop-off and a special story time for pickup the next day.
Stuffed Animal Sleepover Drop-Off
I made a little cozy corner/cuddle puddle with our kiddie pool, story time rug, pillows, and bean bags. When the animals were dropped off, library staff filled out a tag with the stuffie’s name, the child’s name and age, and the caregiver’s email address. These tags were tied to the back of the stuffie so we could remember who belongs to whom. The kids had an hour and a half window to drop off their stuffies before the library closed. We provided small flannel scraps and a few bedtime books so that the kids could read a story and tuck in their stuffies before leaving them.
During drop off, I had a staff person handling stuffie intake while I searched the catalog for book recommendations to match up with each child’s stuffie based on the type of stuffie and the age of the child. These will come into play later for photos and pick-up.
Stuffed Animal Overnight Logistics
From 8-9:30 p.m.
-Photo ideas: story time, reading books (each stuffie has a specific book for them), puzzles/toys/computers in children’s section, board games, staff leading stuffies back to meeting room, snacks, library staff sleeping while animals run amok, animals finally sleeping (I had a couple of other ideas that involved video games and karaoke, but things were taking a bit longer than I anticipated, so I scrapped those.)
9:30-10:30 p.m.
-put photos in slide show for story time (slide show template was created ahead of time so all I had to do was fill in photos), schedule send slideshow and individual stuffie photos to families after story time the next day (I also had grand plans of printing photos, but I did not want to be up until midnight and I hadn’t promised anything other than emailing the slideshow for that purpose.)
Stuffed Animal Sleepover Story Time
Books: Maisy Goes On a Sleepover by Lucy Cousins
Songs/Rhymes (lyrics provided when links not available):
When Cows Get Up in the Morning (We changed the lyrics to match up with the stuffies and on the last verse, just said “when stuffies get up in the morning” and let each child make their own unique noises for hello.)
Song for Bubbles (on Spotify): Twenty Bubbles Go Pop! by The Kiboomers
Manipulatives used: bubble gun, showed slide show of stuffie shenanigans (This served as its own story.)
At the end of the story time, each child got the option to check out the book their stuffie had picked out as well! (And if families were unable to attend the story time, they could still pick up their stuffie at the library any time the next day.)
Overall, this was a really sweet program! Several families told me their kids had been looking forward to it for a week or more! We ended up with 20 stuffies (which was a lot more than I was expecting to be honest) and is part of the reason things were taking so long!
Things I might do differently next time:
-have actual staff helpers (1-2) for the after hours part (My husband was a fine volunteer, but with so many stuffies, it was difficult even for the two of us.)
-host the program on an evening when the library closes earlier so we aren’t staying so late and still have more time to accomplish all our grand ideas (The library closed at 8 on this particular evening, but most nights we close at 6 which would give me a couple more hours for shenanigans.)
Please enjoy some of the photos of the sleepover antics!
Much Hamsters 