Our summer reading program this year followed the theme Read Beyond the Beaten Path.
Reading Scout Merit Badges and Booklet
I had the pleasure of designing our posters, Reading Scout booklet and Reading Scout merit badges. I loved summer camp as a kid and while I was never a part of the Girl Scouts I do remember collecting little patches for completing summer camp activities. I wanted to bring that fun nostalgia to life for our program by making buttons the kids could collect by coming to a specific program or independently completing a task.
I designed the posters and booklet in Canva, using Canva assets, and I illustrated the button backgrounds in Procreate so their design would be cohesive. We used a Silhouette to cut the button paper, and a 1" button maker to construct the buttons. We made 100 of each merit badge.
Teddy Bear Campout
I was also in charge of the Teddy Bear Campout. Children brought a stuffed animal to leave at the library overnight. Upon arrival parents tied little contact info tags around the stuffed animals so we could keep track of them easily and contact anyone who had not picked their stuffed animal up the next day.
We read some stories about going to sleep.
Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
Everybody Sleeps (But Not Fred) by Josh Schneider
Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! by Todd Tarpley
Then we decorated some sleep masks using crayons and stickers. Some made the mask for their stuffed animal others made them for themselves.
Lastly the kids tucked their stuffed animals in around the plush campfire and told their stuffed animals good night. After everyone left Syrena and I posed the stuffed animals playing in the library to share on Facebook.
I made it a point to tell the kids at each transition that their stuffed animals would spend the night at the library, they would have a lot of fun and assured the kids that we would take good care of them. I also told them that if they didn't want their stuffed animal to spend the night that was ok too. I reminded the parents when to pick them up the next day several times as well.
Photos taken with permission.